Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man

‘By order of the Peaky Blinders’ is the catchphrase of Steven Knight’s blockbuster Netflix crime saga show. And the order in this sturdy movie-length sequel is: ‘gaze into a whisky glass while ruminating on the past’. 

Because there’s a lot of brooding in this feature-length, 1940-set Peaky Blinders expansion, as Cillian Murphy’s Birmingham crime boss, Tommy Shelby, mulls over 25 years of trauma and loss over opium binges. If only you could bootleg therapy, eh?

The Immortal Man finds the Nazi Blitz in full swing and Tommy in self-imposed exile in an eerie country pile, a Brummie King Lear contemplating a lost kingdom. Director Tom Harper (Wild Rose) sticks to the sombre, muted tones of a ghost story as the gangster is confronted by the spectres of his past, including the daughter he lost to TB. His efforts to translate the pain into a memoir bring amusement to his loyal factotum Johnny Dogs (Packy Lee).

Only upstanding MP sister Ada (Sophie Rundle) and son Duke (Barry Keoghan, currently cornering the market in wild-eyed tearaways) survive the winnowing of season six. Duke’s erratic attempts to run the empire in his dad’s absence soon have Tommy saddling back up to take the reins in the city. Literally, in one horseback ride through Luftwaffe-blasted Birmingham. 

It’s often enthralling, though rarely explosive

Knight, the show’s creator and the screenwriter, seems to have taken inspiration from Jack Higgins’ The Eagle Has Landed in a fun, inspired-by-real-history plot involving a Nazi scheme to flood Britain with counterfeit bank notes. Tim Roth, as natural an addition to this murky, amoral world as you can imagine, is the traitorous fixer who wrestles with Tommy for the soul of the feckless Duke. Rebecca Ferguson is another newcomer as a gypsy seductress who lures him further onto the rocks.

TV-to-movie spinoffs tend to get caught between upscaling and losing what made them great and laying out more like a feature-length episode. The Immortal Man is closer to the latter than the former, despite a big third-act sequence that swaps the moody introspection for gun battles. 

It’s often enthralling – especially with Murphy at its heart – though rarely explosive. Peaky fans won’t care a jot. Not with Tommy Shelby trotting around Birmingham like he’s in High Noon.

In UK and Ireland cinemas now. Streaming on Netflix worldwide from Mar 20.