Abstract
This chapter explores the BBC historical drama series Peaky Blinders in terms of its representation of dynamic working-class protagonists and industrial Birmingham in the inter-war period. This milieu is one that is largely absent from dramatic representation and rarely licensed for imaginative exploration in quality British television. This representation is founded in the ambition and mission of the series’ creator and author Stephen Knight, whose reflexive and critical portrait is both attracted and repulsed by this milieu in turn. Nonetheless, Peaky Blinders affords its characters psychological complexity and humanity as they cope with the aftermath of the Great War and the limitations and opportunities of their environment.
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Long, P. (2017). Class, Place and History in the Imaginative Landscapes of Peaky Blinders . In: Forrest, D., Johnson, B. (eds) Social Class and Television Drama in Contemporary Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55506-9_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55506-9_12
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