‘GOOD PEOPLE DOING BAD THINGS FOR A GOOD REASON’

“For those who make the rules, there are no rules.”

So said Tommy Shelby in series five of Peaky Blinders. As the sixth and final series (don’t panic, movies and spinoffs WILL follow), comes to BBC One, it feels like an almost too on-the-nose premonition of the parties in Downing Street. Or perhaps a pre-emptive nod and wink to the lies and obfuscation that followed these parties, and the ways institutions that purport to be independent rallied around an embattled Prime Minister.

But writer Steven Knight plucked that phrase out of the air for his iconic protagonist before the pandemic even began. And it’s not the first time that life has imitated the art of the Peaky Blinders.

“This has happened all the way through,” says Knight, talking to The Big Issue on Zoom. “Things that are written years earlier seem to be topical when it comes to broadcast. It’s been lucky for the show, but unlucky for the world that things like fascism and nationalism have become topical.”

Final series this may be, but it is not the end of – Knight is keen