Season six of the BBC gangster drama airs this month, but it’s not curtains for the Shelbys yet. The creator tells us about plans for a ballet and movie, the loss of Helen McCrory – and what Tommy Shelby has in common with Princess Diana
Steven Knight is no stranger to good reviews. After all, he co-created Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?, received an Oscar nomination for his second movie (Dirty Pretty Things) and is a sought-after screenwriter with credits including Spencer, starring Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana. But when he launched Peaky Blinders nine years ago, the reactions were less positive.
The stylised gangster drama, set in the Small Heath area of Birmingham between the wars but shot like an apocalyptic western, initially left critics sceptical. They couldn’t, however, agree on what they were watching. The Telegraph bemoaned a mood of “unrelenting gloom” whereas this newspaper’s lukewarm review saw the show as “a break from tortured angst and depressing realism”. The New York Times decided the series didn’t “have quite enough juice”. Knight smiles magnanimously. “You can’t pretend a good review isn’t nice,” he says over video call from his London home. “But if you can enter the culture, that’s the greatest compliment.”
