The Return of 'Peaky Blinders' …. WOW … TV Review

If you haven't seen it yet, you might want to stop here and catch up before you read any more, no one likes a spoiler so get to the BBC iPlayer.

After what seemed like forever, Peaky Blinders finally returned tonight and it was pretty bloody good. The end of the last season the Shelby family were carted off to prison all but Tommy Shelby and the opening last night saw then being led again this time to the hangman.

At the last moment Tommy comes to the rescue by blackmailing the Government and the King to release his family and along the way picking up an OBE for himself. We jump forward a year and the Shelby’s look to have all gone their separate ways. Tommy looks every bit the executive businessman still running the family business interests with his newly enquired OBE while the rest of the family are scattered.

Tommy Shelby

Crazy Arthur and his little family with his dashing new longer locks is pottering around his garden and looking after his chickens. John is shooting everything that moves on his farm and partaking of his wife Esme. Aunt Polly, deteriorating condition fuelled by whisky and phials of cocaine actually works really well as a representation of the broken family as she talks to the ghosts of children her son Michael still works with Tommy. While their sister Ada as returned from Boston for Christmas and visits each of them looking to bring them together.

With Christmas coming we were promised a New Year’s Eve family gathering but the postman look to have put that on the back burner after the Shelby’s receive sinister 'black hand' warnings from the mafia, it's obvious they're going to have to work together sooner than later. However, when Tommy discovers his new cook and his assistant are Italian he puts two and two together and comes up with the right answer they are mafia. With some torture and death, he finds out their plan to kill the family was due to take place on Christmas Day and there was me thinking Valentine Day’s was the mafia’s favourite day for a massacre.

The New kid on the Block

Tommy’s idea is to run to somewhere they could feel safe and decides its back to Birmingham and their roots in the Small Heath area where it all started and to where the gang is the strongest.

As the order to gather in Birmingham Arthur is reached by phone and Michael after taking Polly and Ada to the meeting, goes to collect John and Esme who Tommy couldn’t contact. As a cart pulls up outside John’s house its easy to guess what happens next and up pops mafia gunmen John armed with only a rifle and Michael looks to be unarmed and the mafia killers have Tommy-guns and a hail of bullets riddles the Shelby’s. Are they dead because it looks like, and it begins?

So, that's the Peaky Blinders versus the mafia. Well, I think this series already looks like it could be the best yet and fans were over the moon to have it back on our screens, as well as the first peak of Oscar-winner Adrien Brody the leader of the mafia.