This week saw a belated welcome back to Peaky Blinders (BBC One), still one of the oddest crime dramas to find its way to our screens in recent times.
It’s a between-the-wars period piece, but its soundtrack is so contemporary it could be a Guy Ritchie film. It’s fiction, but its supporting players and villains include Winston Churchill, the IRA and British fascist leader Oswald Mosley.
With such a cast lined up against him, history tells us that Cillian Murphy’s huskily menacing Birmingham gang boss Tommy Shelby isn’t likely to be the last person standing by the end of his story.
So, is Tommy Shelby a goner?
Yet what a blast it is to see him in action. Or inaction, for the moment… thoroughly foiled by the end of series five in 2019, the last we saw of Tommy he was kneeling in the mud and ready to die by his own hand.
Fate intervened, and now here he is, getting back on his feet.
We caught up with Tommy on the island of Miquelon, off the coast of Newfoundland, making plans to corner the opium market into Boston with the help of some old friends.
The meeting goes badly, and a seemingly powerless Shelby is almost humiliated. Until, forced to recite a piece of poetry, he repeats William Blake’s A Poison Tree and makes it sound like a threat.
The outstanding Murphy’s Shelby is the heart of this show, damaged and vicious.
Like James Gandolfini in The Sopranos, he bends the entire pace of the thing to his character’s will rather than giving in to the macho typicalities of the genre, but creator Steven Knight’s script is also well-observed and unexpected.
The burn this time was slow, but the tension still grips like pliers.
Sadly, while the show was on a short hiatus its co-star Helen McCrory died, but on every level this episode dealt with the situation well.
Polly was written out via a blunt assassination, but her funeral was grand and the show itself was dedicated to McCrory.
Elsewhere in the supporting cast, Anya Taylor-Joy’s return as savvy American gangster’s daughter Gina Gray was, well, a joy.
The Mystery of Anthrax Island
Another menacing period piece this week was The Mystery of Anthrax Island (BBC Scotland).
This told of Gruinard Island near Ullapool, and its use during the Second World War as a staging post for testing of anthrax as a possible weapon against the Nazis.
Although there has been a clean-up attempt since, the island remains uninhabited.
However, in 1981 a bucket of contaminated soil from the island was found outside the Porton Down research facility, apparently planted there by a shadowy group named Dark Harvest.
The documentary relates this fascinating story well, although the tone jumps around somewhat – is it suggesting Dark Harvest were eco-terrorists or environmental campaigners?
Its efforts to ask people who may or may not know what went on were fascinating.
Finally, a thorough recommendation for Rock Till You Drop (BBC Two), in which Spandau Ballet’s Martin Kemp and rapper Lady Leshurr attempt to form two competing groups of elderly musicians.
The contest format felt tacked-on, and the first episode only hinted at the talent out ther.
The show’s respectful and involved interest in people finding purpose and achievement in their much later years is an absolute thrill.
