Peaky Blinders is all style and no substance. Endless slow-motion shots to dramatic music of characters walking, smoking cigarettes, or squinting into the distance. The priority is clearly to make everyone look cool: cool when they're engaging in brutal violence, cool when they're suffering or dying, cool when they're eating breakfast. Every shot is either like a music video or a fashion magazine spread in period costume. The characters are props - lifeless mannequins. None of them feel like actual people, nor are they meant to. The actors here are all good, but they have nothing to do but pose. We're just supposed to be dazzled by how cool they look and sound. The fact that so many viewers seem to think this show is gritty and realistic is a depressing commentary on how on we as a society can no longer tell the difference between the fake and the authentic (and how little we care about the difference). This show and others of its ilk (like the even more popular Taboo) are just nihilism photoshopped to look sexy. Superficially seductive, empty at the core.
Review of Peaky Blinders
