‘Peaky Blinders’ Season 3 Review: Cillian Murphy & Gang Raise Stakes In Strong Return
The third season of Peaky Blinders launches on Netflix on May 31 and if you missed out on the pandemonium of the Birmingham-bred Shelby crime family so far, then I strongly suggest you catch up while you can — cause you’re going to want to pick up everything they’re putting down this time round.
Without making too much of dog’s breakfast about it, Season 3 of the Steven Knight-created series truly takes the Cillian Murphy-led family to a new level of wealth, danger and lessons in the ways of the world. As I say in my video review above, it is sheer TV poetry in motion, and after you binge the six new episodes you’ll be begging for more.
Picking up in 1924, about 18 months after the events of Season 2 and on the wedding day of Murphy’s Tommy Shelby, the Tim Mielants-directed run really peels apart how dangerous success can be and how much others — even those closest to you or your own flesh and blood — will try to rip it out of your hands. As the specter of the First World War begins to recede and the Roaring Twenties take off, Tommy, the great Helen McCrory’s Aunt Polly, struggling to live on the straight and narrow older brother Arthur and the rest of the Shelby crew become caught up in an international arms deal and much more.
As the antidote to the cloying snobbery of Downton Abbey and having already debuted in the UK earlier this month, the Weinstein Company distributed Peaky Blinders Season 3 is full of death, White Russians, sinister priests in the form of the never more menacing Paddy Considine, cursed jewels, horse races, Winston Churchill, political upheaval, London villains, Tom Hardy and Alexander Siddig — to name a few players in this latest installment.
However, as good as Murphy and McCrory are this time round, the real standout this season has to be Paul Anderson’s Arthur, who is now married, still murderous and explosive, and trying to stay off the hard stuff. Revenant alum Anderson is suave in his ability to hold all the almost paralyzing aspects of the the older brother together and let them drip or flood out like blood from a wound.
So, click on my video review above and start planning if will watch the new run in one go next Tuesday or save the feast for the weekend.
This review originally ran on May 24, 2016.
Related stories
Netflix Orders 1980s Female Wrestling Comedy Series 'GLOW' From Jenji Kohan
Skyler Gisondo Cast In 'Santa Clarita Diet' Netflix Comedy Series
Get more from Deadline.com: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Newsletter
