Peaky Blinders recap: episode four

Peaky Blinders: episode by episodePeaky BlindersIt's all kicking off between the Lees and the Shelbys – and between Campbell and Tommy. But there's still a problem with clunky exposition

SPOILER ALERT: This blog is for those who are watching series one of Peaky Blinders. Don’t read on if you haven’t seen episode four.

Click here to read Julia Raeside’s episode three blogpost

The much-talked about war with the Lee family took physical form this week, as the Shelbys’ bitter rivals came to turn over the bookies and plant a grenade in Tommy’s car. Meanwhile, Tommy scuppered his brother John’s plans to marry a local prostitute – as it turns out, the one that Tommy has been seeing since coming back from the Somme – and instead married him off to a girl from the Lee family in order to end their so-called war as quickly as it had started.

But we could see quite a bit of time had passed, thanks to the sudden eruption of Ada’s bump. Sure enough, before episode’s end she has given birth to a healthy baby boy despite all the drinking, smoking and dancing. Campbell carried out a raid on Stanley Chapman’s house as his communist witch-hunt continued. Tommy gave away Chapman’s whereabouts to Campbell in exchange for the safe passage of Ada and Freddie out of Birmingham. But they keep coming back!

The rainy warehouse at night provided a stunning setting for the Campbell v Tommy face-off, but the exposition was as painful as ever. What began as a blatant up-sum of cause and effect so far ended with a suddenly very vicious Campbell telling Tommy what would happen to his family in graphic detail if the deal wasn’t carried out on time.

Elsewhere, the brummie copper that Campbell employs to further highlight the haywire accents of the rest of the cast tortured Chapman to death, inadvertently. Campbell told him to throw the dead communist down some stairs and call the coroner. This episode has seen a sudden and not entirely convincing shift in Campbell’s demeanour and the simmering, quiet confidence has been all but replaced by an outre violence and meanness.

Super-spy Grace is meanwhile quizzing Arthur about the storage of his “contraband”, which sets alarm bells ringing with Tommy. But when he takes her to the church “for confession” he instead offers her a job keeping the Shelby & Co books and bringing a touch of class to his business meeting. He kisses her, but I could detect no chemistry at all between them. This could be the actors or the fact that neither character really fancies the other, they’re just dancing around one another trying to find out information from the other. Still, I’m not quite sure how he’s going to pass her off as his classy business manager when he announced to Kimber and anyone in a half-mile radius that she was a prostitute with the clap last week.

And moments after Ada and Freddie’s son is born, the cops swoop in to make an arrest. Pol assumes that Tommy tipped them off but he looks genuinely aghast. Then his suspicions quietly turn to the Garrison’s barmaid and her newly installed telephone.

With two episodes to go, Campbell needs to resolve the “gons” matter, Tommy must crush his cockney rival Kimber, and Grace needs to get out of Birmingham alive.

Lines of the week

“Men and their cocks never cease to amaze me,” exclaims Pol when John announces his engagement to Lizzie. For some reason this made me picture a line of them with sparklers and ribbons attached.

“You’re a dreamer, Freddie,” says Ada as he has a bath. I smirked at this. Sometimes this script sounds like an attempt by the writer to sneak in band names and song titles, like Chris Packham did on Springwatch.

“Sometimes women have to take over, like in the war,” says Aunt Pol to Freddie at his mother’s grave. It’s another clanging example of “you didn’t need to add that last bit”.

The music

I Fought Piranhas by the White Stripes made an appearance. And then after last week’s blog, I nearly dropped my toast at the use of Clap Hands by Tom Waits. I knew they’d run out of Cave/Stripes songs eventually and move on to him.

Quick Guide