Every Season Of Peaky Blinders, Ranked

“Peaky Blinders” single-handedly resurrected the newsboy cap (sans the hidden razorblades, hopefully) as a menswear item. It also delivered a long, uncensored look at the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder in men who had served in some of the most unforgiving conditions of World War I, and lived during an era where people were mostly expected to walk off things like mental health issues. Oh, and it was a very good period gangster drama that wasn’t afraid to go to some truly uncompromising places and had an absolutely stellar cast at its disposal.

To this day, the show’s stellar theme song (“Red Right Hand” by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds) evokes images of Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) riding through the dirty streets of Birmingham in 1919, and the terrors that followed him like a dark cloud — or, as he personally thought, a curse — wherever he went. All six seasons of the show are great in their own way, but which of them truly defined “Peaky Blinders?” Let’s rank the series’ seasons from worst to best.

There are no bad “Peaky Blinders” seasons, but a couple of them fall ever so slightly by the wayside compared to the others. There’s nothing inherently wrong with Season 5, for instance, but it lacks some of the narrative cohesion every other season has in abundance. Part of this comes from the season’s overt focus on politics, which, on the one hand, shows just how far Tommy Shelby has come in life, but it also ends up muddying the series’ crime drama waters. If that’s your thing, Season 5 might well be your favorite. For me, however, this undermines the show somewhat.

There’s a lot that’s good about this season, though. Fearsome new figures like Jimmy McCavern (Brian Gleeson), Triad drug dealer Brilliant Chang (Andrew Koji), the fascist IRA bigshot Captain Swing (Charlene McKenna), and the even more fascist politician Sir Oswald Mosley (Sam Claflin) make for a threatening collective presence. Elsewhere, Helen McCrory is a consistent ray of light as Polly Gray, who takes care of the clan’s day-to-day as the de facto head of Shelby Company Limited while also dealing with the shadier side of things with folks like Aberama Gold (Aidan Gillen).

All of the individual plot threads makes sense, but while most “Peaky Blinders” seasons have clear-cut central themes, this one’s a bit all over the place. The slightly cluttered season comes at the viewer like a ton of narrative bricks, and the end result is perhaps a little too intense and overwhelming — even before that nail-biter of a season-ending cliffhanger.

Where to go after an all-timer of a villain like Chester Campbell (Sam Neill)? As Paddy Considine’s Father Hughes shows, the official “Peaky Blinders” answer to this dilemma is simple: You go as dark as possible. “Peaky Blinders” creator Steven Knight intentionally keeps his characters off the road to happiness, and this attitude is in full swing when it comes to Season 3. For instance, two guesses as to what happens with Tommy’s dream wedding with long-time love interest Grace Burgess (Annabelle Wallis).

Season 3 also introduces the Peaky Blinders’ scariest adversary yet in the shape of a secret organization known as the Economic League — the show’s first large scale foray into right-wing extremism. The aftermath of the Russian Revolution further reaches the Blinders in the shape of a Romanov grand duke (Jan Bivjoet) and his family, along with a sizable subplot featuring the show’s first flirtations with members of the Changretta crime family, Angel (Pedro Caxade) and Vicente (Kenneth Colley).

From notable deaths to possibly cursed jewels, the year 1924 is a very bad one for the Shelbys, and Tommy in particular goes through so much hurt and pain that it goes on to influence his actions for the rest of the series. Many other events of the season also resonate well beyond their actual area of effect, and the Changretta storyline alone ends up biting the Shelbys severely in the rear come Season 4. The sheer amount of groundwork this season lays is second only to “Peaky Blinders” Season 1, really. Combine this with an enticing story and a truly despicable main villain, and this is a great season of TV — even if it’s not the greatest season of this particular show.

“Peaky Blinders” Season 6, which is set in 1933, shoulders the unwelcome responsibility of serving as a proper conclusion while also acting in full knowledge that more peakiness is on its way. The long-gestating “Peaky Blinders” movie was already common knowledge by the time the series finale came around, and now it looks like even the movie won’t end “Peaky Blinders” and Netflix has plans for more. If that wasn’t enough, Season 6 is tasked with wrapping up both the political machinations and shocking cliffhanger ending of Season 5 as well.

Apart from the aforementioned array of narrative challenges, this season is severely hamstrung by the untimely passing of series MVP contender Helen McCrory, to the point that Cillian Murphy has said the hardest part of shooting the final season was working without her. The story, alas, hobbles on and weaves McCrory’s (and Polly’s) passing into the plot in a way that makes her presence loom over the proceedings — often with the helping hand of Polly’s son Michael Gray (Finn Cole), who becomes Tommy’s (somewhat underwhelming) final adversary on the show.

Curses and the traditional Shelby misfortune once again play a part, as things implode in a way that leaves Tommy almost down for the count. By the time he exits the show with the horse he rode in on (well, it’s technically a different steed, but the sentiment is still there), it seems that the fictional Peaky Blinders gang has finally gone the way of their real-life counterpart, which ceased to exist in the 1920s. It remains to be seen how the story will carry on and whether Tommy will continue his equestrian entrances and exits, but for now, “Peaky Blinders” Season 6 remains a fitting and surprisingly spiritual finale.

The vendetta season. “Peaky Blinders” Season 4 revolves around the smug and ruthless Luca Changretta (Adrien Brody), who hauls his mob squad to Birmingham in order to rain vengeance on the Shelbys after they killed his father and brother in Season 3. In the context of the show, Luca is a new kind of villain from the new world. While most fans are no doubt familiar with the tactics he uses (they’re commonplace in countless other movies and shows, after all), it’s still fun to watch the Shelbys scrambling to survive this new, powerful adversary.

The Peaky Blinders versus a New York mafia family is a concept ripped straight out of a crime show fan’s fever dream, and the series delivers precisely what this premise teases. The war between the two factions is a brutal struggle that spans across the city and leads to some truly vicious moments, including the death of key character John Shelby (Joe Cole) at the hands of the Italians. Despite the overwhelming might of the mafia, however, the Blinders are ultimately playing on their home turf, and the way Tommy, Polly, and Arthur Shelby (Paul Anderson) outmaneuver Luca in the end is one of the biggest punch-the-air moments of the entire show.

Season 4 is a very compelling watch, but it’s also the least “Peaky Blinders” storyline of the entire show. Few other seasons can match its action and sheer adrenaline-dripping intensity, but the end result almost seems like a trial run for that long-gestating “Peaky Blinders” movie. Instead of the series’ usual fare of complex machinations and moral ambiguity that can only be told by this show, this season spins a gripping but relatively straightforward yarn of vengeance and gangland warfare that could be adapted by many other series with comparatively minor changes.

From the second Tommy Shelby rides through the streets of Birmingham to the moment he first opens his mouth and shows he’s a far more complex character than the straightforward thug the sight of the fleeing locals telegraphs him as, the opening moments of “Peaky Blinders” Season 1 are a perfect introduction to the show. As big an impact as the future Oscar winner makes from the get-go, the series is also quick to establish that it’s more than just “The Cillian Murphy Show.” Exciting characters are introduced at a breakneck speed, and by the time Sam Neill’s zealous Major Chester Campbell shows up with his impossibly deep Irish accent and unleashes hell, the series’ mission statement is loud and clear: This isn’t your average period drama.

There was nothing quite like “Peaky Blinders” on TV when its first season started airing in 2013. In many ways, its vibe is still one of a kind. The first season takes no prisoners; it drags viewers kicking and screaming into the post-WWI Britain and outright orders them to marvel at its every twist and turn, all the while oozing tension and cool from every pore.

Granted, things aren’t quite perfect. Since the first episode alone has to set up as many plotlines as possible, the amount of world-building and character introduction work Season 1 shoulders means that some of the individual storytelling beats might not quite match the later seasons’ finest moments. Still, the storyline about missing guns keeps things together well enough, while the sheer power of this first exposure to the show’s world and its many memorable characters stay in the viewer’s mind long after the season itself ends.

Season 2 is where “Peaky Blinders” really comes into its own. The sophomore season continues the “grab you by the lapels” approach Season 1 establishes, upping the ante with bigger and bolder doses of drama, thrills, and threats. The injured but eternally obsessive Chester Campbell is somehow crueler than ever, and the conclusion of his intensely uncomfortable storyline with Polly ranks among the show’s finest hours. The increasingly complex Arthur Shelby is another standout, and his raid of the Eden Club ranks among the most memorable scenes of the shows earlier run. Everyone else is reliably great as well — and the show’s supporting character game is as strong as it’ll ever get. Not only is Major Campbell still around, but we also get two notable criminal figures with a long-lasting impact on the plot: Tom Hardy’s eternal wild card Alfie Solomons and Noah Taylor’s threatening horse-racing crime lord Darby Sabini. 

After watching this stellar season, it’s easy to ask yourself: “How can ‘Peaky Blinders’ possibly surpass this?” The answer is that it never really could. The show went on to take us to many intense, harrowing, and entertaining places, but as excellent as it was throughout its six-season run (so far), it never quite managed to climb the heights of Season 2 again.