“Peaky Blinders” always carried itself like a movie. Even when it began as a soot-streaked family crime drama about postwar Birmingham gangsters clawing their way toward power, the series had a widescreen temperament—operatic, bruised, and obsessed with destiny. So “Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man” did not feel like a side extension or a victory-lap add-on. It felt like the form finally catching up with the scale the show had always been reaching for.
The sixth and final season left Cillian Murphy’s Tommy Shelby in one of the strangest places the character had ever occupied: alive, alone, and momentarily free. Having faked his own death and ridden away on a white horse, Tommy seemed to have reached the closest thing to peace that a man like him could ever hope for. But “The Immortal Man” refused to let that image stand as an ending. Instead, it pulled Tommy back into the world he had spent years trying to dominate and outrun.
What followed was less a comeback than a reckoning. The film turned Tommy toward his failures as a father, his family’s accumulated grief, and a larger Nazi counterfeit plot spreading across the U.K. If the series had always been about ambition, trauma, and the uses of violence, the film sharpened all of that into something harsher: a final chapter about whether a man like Tommy Shelby could ever earn absolution from the damage he had done.
That was what gave the film its weight. This was not just another go-round with an iconic antihero in a famous coat. It was a story about fathers and sons, about mercy and cruelty becoming tangled together, and about the ghosts—literal and otherwise—that keep following Tommy long after he has tried to leave them behind.
In their conversation with The Playlist, Steven Knight and Tom Harper discussed why Tommy’s story needed to end on the big screen, why Arthur’s death had to wound the film so deeply, how they calibrated the emotional breaks in Murphy’s deeply controlled performance, and where the “Peaky Blinders” universe goes next.
Why did it feel important to make this movie after Season 6 ended in such an ambiguous place, with what was maybe the closest thing Tommy Shelby could ever get to a happy ending? What still felt unfinished about the character for you?
Knight: There were two things. I always planned to finish this during the Second World War, so that it would be a story of a man between the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Second World War. And I always wanted to end this chapter with a movie. And I felt that when he rode away on a white horse, that’s great, but I couldn’t imagine that Tommy Shelby—
It’s not very Tommy.
Knight: No, exactly. The Tommy Shelby story has got to end with a big bang. And that’s what it does now. And that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to find Tommy Shelby in a different place, where he’s done lots of bad things in his life, but he’s always been a good man doing bad things for a good reason. And the good reason was always his family. But now we find him in a place where he’s done something for which he cannot forgive himself. And I wanted the film to be his journey to redemption and absolution for what he’s done to a member of his family.
“In the Bleak Midwinter” isn’t referenced that often, but every time it appears here, it lands hard—especially when it’s on Arthur’s grave. Were these characters always living on borrowed time for you?
Knight: Absolutely that. In the back story, which is referred to, I think, in Series 5, basically Tommy and his brothers and their comrades, who feature in the series, including Jeremiah, were all stuck in No Man’s Land in the First World War during a battle. They all were certain they were going to die. And so they all sing, Jeremiah leads them in singing “In The Bleak Midwinter.” But, miraculously, they’re saved. And so they all say to each other, “Everything from now on is a bonus. And when the time does come to die, remember this moment by saying ‘In The Bleak Midwinter.’”
I can’t bring up “In the Bleak Midwinter” without talking about Arthur. I’d love some insight into the decision to kill him off, and especially to make his death come at Tommy’s hands. That relationship was such a key bond throughout the series. How does Tommy get to a place where that becomes possible?
Knight: Yeah. I mean, that’s the point. The absolute point of that event is that it’s something that he cannot forgive himself for, because it goes against everything he’s ever stood for. His brother has always been by his side, everything has always been for the family, but a point was reached where…he says it himself: First, he says it was an accident, and then later he admits it wasn’t an accident.
And the other thing I wanted to put in there was that it was always Tommy Shelby who could drink and drink and drink, and he’s never drunk. But then he says in his confession to Ada’s body, “I was drunk when I did it.” And that is such a—
Harper: I’m a bit more of a softie, I think, than Steven and Cillian are. I was like, “Arthur is suffering. He’s been suffering for a long time.” So did he do it in part at least because yes, of course, Arthur was drunk and annoying and doing terrible things, and fucking messing things up for Tommy, but was he partly easing his brother’s burden in doing it? But actually, Steve and Cillian were both like, “No.” He was doing it out of rage, anger, and booze.
I’m a little with Tom on that, because it makes such a neat circle with the way the movie ends, and the question of whether love means being willing to do something that terrible.
Knight: Well, there is a line in, I think it’s Series 4, where Arthur says, “Sometimes killing is a kindness.” So, that’s a reference back to that.
Stepping back a bit, Steven, you said you always wanted to end this chapter with a feature film. What changed for you in thinking about what “Peaky Blinders” is as a movie instead of a series?
Knight: I think there are differences because if you’ve got six hours of screen time for a series, you can be more expansive about which stories you choose. You can cut away to other independent stories within the universe. But with a film, I think you have to choose and stay focused. And “Immortal Man” is focused on Tommy Shelby’s story. You have to do a beginning, a middle, and an end. You can’t end on a cliffhanger. You’ve got to tie all the pieces up. So, that’s different. Also, the budget’s bigger, and that helps.
What do you think this story would have looked like as a Season 7 instead of “The Immortal Man”?
Knight: Oh, I’ve not thought about that. It would’ve been very different, I think. And certain things that we discover in the movie, we would see happen rather than be told about.
I’m assuming that means Arthur.
Knight: Yeah, exactly that.
Tom, you directed several episodes in the first season. What was different about coming back to this world at the scale of a feature, even though the show was already epic a lot of the time?
Harper: I think there are differences. Over time, I think the differences and lines between film and TV have become more blurred, in what I think is a really good way, but I still think there are differences. I think it’s a more singular story often in film. And as Steve said, you think of it slightly differently, in terms of the beginning, middle, the end, and the focus of the story.
I think it needs to deliver a shorter, sharper, more impactful punch, particularly in this film. And I think there are slightly different audience expectations, just in terms of perhaps the operatic nature of it, perhaps in terms of the buy-in you get from the audience. So, we can be a little slower with the storytelling at the beginning, because I think that gives you audience buy-in. It helps if you’ve got fantastic writing and a performance like Cillian’s and a cast as we do, because you buy their attention. So, I think there are changes. And, as Steve said, you can make things go bang in a way that you potentially didn’t have the money for before.
Also, just in terms of conception, there is a feeling that you are making something on the highest level possible. So that means you take more time over some things. It’s got a different rhythm to it. Yeah, so I think there are small differences, but as you say, the series was always cinematic in its ambition, anyway. But I think this hopefully lifts it to that next level: the scale goes up, and the focus differs.
For all that this is Tommy’s story, it’s also a story about fathers and sons—those who are present, absent, or failed by each other. By the end, Duke has to make some of the same choices Tommy did. I couldn’t decide whether Tommy is freeing Duke from this life or damning him to the same demons by asking it of him.
Knight: I think both things are true, and I think it’s a really good point that you make, that what he’s doing is he’s been asked to save his son, and yet from one point of view, he’s leaving him with the burden of knowing that he’s killed his father.
When we first find Duke, when he’s at his worst, he says, “I can’t kill a member of my family.” And yet when he’s redeemed, he can. So, I wanted those opposites to be at odds with each other at all times. And then, I think, ultimately Duke did the right thing. Tommy puts it most simply: “You’d do it for a horse.” You know what I mean? Even in Season 1, Tommy Shelby said, “I am a horse.” He’s always had that connection with horses and nature that is probably an echo of who he was before the First World War.
Cillian is incredible in this film, and there’s something even more tragic than usual about Tommy here. How did you work with him to bring the character to this point?
Harper: I mean, it’s certainly fair to say I think he breathes, and it happens to a degree.
That’s kind of the answer I expected, honestly.
Harper: But I also think that everybody needs people that they trust to bounce off and to check against. One thing that we discussed a lot, for example, is because Tommy… Well, Cillian is so restrained in his performance, but some key moments let the emotion in. We talked a lot about the moments we can let the crack show. And I think there’s probably one or two moments, three maybe, in the film where you see a crack in that restraint, sometimes a bit more than a crack. And I think they’re as powerful as they are because Cillian is so restrained in the rest of the film. There’s so much going on behind the eyes. There’s so much complexity to it, but it’s amazing how he can convey so much with so little. It’s a real gift.
When he’s walking away from the gurney with Ada’s body on it…
Harper: Exactly. And that was actually something that came a bit later when we were charting, leading to the point at which it would all feel right for the ending. I felt that we were missing one crack. And that is a good example of why I think it was such a brilliant team: we discussed it together, and Steve came up with a little addendum to the scene with Ada. And Cillian had an idea about exactly how he could do it. And so there was a careful kind of going through it all together as a team, we navigated that, because it’s a very delicate emotional arc, and you just don’t want to give too much away because it doesn’t feel like Tommy. At the same time, he is a human, and there are cracks.
And she’s the last of them.
Harper: Exactly.
I loved how the film made a point of including Polly, and by extension Helen McCrory, even in small ways. Was that always something you wanted to preserve?
Knight: Totally. I mean, “Peaky Blinders” wouldn’t have been “Peaky Blinders” without Polly Gray, and that means without Helen. And we absolutely wanted the spirit of Polly to be part of the thing. The sequence where Tommy basically says to Kaulo, Duke’s Romani aunt, “I’ve known what you were up to all along because of something Polly told me.” And, obviously, we see photos of her throughout as well. But, yeah, she’s always part of it. It was really tragic that we lost Helen, but something that Helen brought to the show is still in the show now.
“The Immortal Man” works as its own story, but it also clearly feels like a bridge to whatever comes next for “Peaky Blinders.” Can you say anything about where the spinoff goes next?
Knight: I think that’s as much as I can say. It is Birmingham. It is some of the same characters, and there’s a time jump to the early ’50s, so we’ll pick up the story there.
You’re writing the next James Bond film, and there’s material in this movie that carries a little of that Bond feeling. Did this movie or the series at all shape how you’re thinking about Bond?
Knight: For myself, I feel that every project is different, so I do compartmentalize. But then other people will observe the work, and say, “Well, it has this in common, it has that in common.” But I think for oneself, you don’t really know if you’re doing that or not, to be honest. But as I was saying to someone earlier, my daughter, rather than saying it was like a Bond film, said it was like Batman. I said, “Why Batman?” And she said, “Well, he puts on the clothes, and he changes, and he becomes the person who does the heroic things.” And I thought, “Oh, yeah, right.”
A last thing, random, I will ask you about. What happened to your “Star Wars” film?
Knight: When you’re working on a franchise, you go in, you do your bit, and then you move on. And so that’s what I did. So, I’ve done my bit. The universe is so big, you’re like an asteroid that just shoots through.
Fair enough.
“Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man” is now streaming on Netflix.
