Tommy Shelby

• 1. Introduction

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  Tommy Shelby, the central figure of the British crime drama Peaky Blinders, exists on screen partly because of a text message of four words. The message read "Remember, I'm an actor." Its sender was Cillian Murphy, and its recipient was a director who had other plans for the part.

  Tommy is a fictional gangster, yet audiences have followed him through a long run of series with a kind of fascinated dread. He is a leader who loves his family and endangers it again and again. This documentary asks how Murphy ended up in the role and what the First World War left inside the character. It also asks who Tommy trusted, who betrayed him, and what the series finally decides to do with him.

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• 2. Casting and Background

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  Jason Statham was the man director Steven Knight originally wanted. Knight met both actors in Los Angeles and chose Statham. He later admitted his mistake. In his words, "Cillian, when you meet him, isn't Tommy, obviously, but I was stupid enough not to understand that."

  Murphy had his own reasons for wanting the job. He had been hoping for more television work. He recalled that "Those iconic American shows had been on and we watched them and everyone was kind of conscious of that." In his view, the BBC felt the same pressure. The Peaky Blinders scripts were the first television scripts that reached him. He has admitted he did not know who the real Peaky Blinders were when he read them.

  Many characters in the series come from real historical figures, but most of the Peaky Blinders are Knight's inventions. Tommy is one of them. He is written as Thomas Michael Shelby, born in Birmingham around 1890 to a family that is both Irish Traveller and Romani. Murphy spent time with Romani people to prepare.

  Tommy grew up in the Small Heath neighbourhood of Birmingham. He was the second of five children of Arthur Shelby Sr and Mrs Shelby, and his brother Arthur Jnr, born in 1887, was the eldest. In his twenties he dated Greta Jurossi, a woman of Italian descent, until tuberculosis killed her.

  The war is the deepest mark on him. Tommy served as a sergeant major in the First World War, and he came home with post-traumatic stress disorder. The series implies he returned a changed man, and the condition keeps resurfacing across the story.

  Viewers noticed one small detail of his appearance. Tommy wears an undercut, and the style has seen a resurgence in popularity since the show took hold.

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• 3. The Inspector and the Barmaid

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  In 1919, Tommy leads the Peaky Blinders in taking a consignment of guns from the Birmingham Small Arms factory. Winston Churchill, played by Andy Nyman in the first series, sends Inspector Campbell, played by Sam Neill, to recover them. Campbell plants an undercover agent in Tommy's life. She is Grace Burgess, played by Annabelle Wallis, and she arrives as Tommy's new barmaid.

  At the Cheltenham races, Grace attends as Tommy's date. Tommy has been fixing horse races, which puts him in conflict with Billy Kimber, played by Charlie Creed-Miles, who runs them. Tommy first offers Grace to Kimber as part of a security deal for the Garrison, then saves her from harm. He also secures a betting licence and makes Grace secretary to his brother Arthur at the Garrison, which the family owns. The two fall in love.

  Grace gives Campbell the location of the guns in exchange for a promise that he will leave Tommy's family alone. She resigns from the Crown. Campbell then proposes marriage to her, and she refuses because she loves Tommy. Tommy and the Lees, another family, fight Kimber's men, and Tommy shoots Kimber dead. His aunt Polly Gray, played by Helen McCrory, then tells him that Grace was the reason Campbell found the guns. The first series ends with a gunshot at the railway station.

  Campbell survives it. The second series reveals that Grace was the one who shot him. He then agrees with Churchill, now played by Richard McCabe, that Tommy could be useful to them. Soon afterward, Campbell's men from Northern Ireland, members of the Ulster Volunteers, kidnap Tommy and take him to an empty field. Meanwhile Polly meets Campbell and shoots him. Tommy is released carrying a message from Churchill promising future contact.

  One detail from that day at the races stays unresolved. Grace had told Tommy she was pregnant, and he had answered that they would talk after the race.

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• 4. Alfie and the Underworld

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  A barge carries Tommy to London in the second series, straight out of a hospital he has left early. The reason is Darby Sabini, played by Noah Taylor. Tommy, Arthur and their brother John had started a fight at Sabini's club. Sabini's thugs answered by kidnapping their sister Ada Thorne, played by Sophie Rundle, and beating Tommy.

  In London he meets Alfie Solomons, played by Tom Hardy, and struggles to persuade him to side with the Peaky Blinders. Alfie later allies with Sabini instead and deceives Arthur into prison, though he eventually gets Arthur out. On Derby Day, Tommy sends his men to collect and burn the licences of Sabini's bookmakers and steal the bets, all without firing a shot.

  Alfie's role grows from there. In the third series Tommy brings him in to appraise Russian jewels for a heist. The scheme is tangled with Father John Hughes, played by Paddy Considine, who first appears as a buyer of armoured vehicles. Hughes learns of Tommy's plan to kill him after Polly, drunk in church, reveals it in confession. Hughes then has Tommy's son Charles kidnapped. His price is the jewels, plus Tommy blowing up a train that must kill six people.

  Tommy discovers that Alfie passed the plans to Hughes. Polly's son Michael Gray, played by Finn Cole, rescues Charles and kills Hughes, but word does not reach the family in time. The train is destroyed. Tommy shares out the loot, then announces that the police are waiting at the house, and the family is taken away in handcuffs.

  The fourth series begins with Arthur, John, Michael and Polly preparing to hang, and Tommy's reprieve arrives just in time. Alfie has agreed to let Luca Changretta, played by Adrien Brody, kill the Peaky Blinders. In return the Changrettas will transport and sell Alfie's bootleg liquor in New York. Luca wants revenge for the deaths of his father Vicente and his brother Angel.

  Changretta's letters mark each Shelby for death. John is killed on Christmas Day. Changretta visits Tommy's factory under a false name, having removed the bullets from the pistol Tommy fires. He sets one bullet aside for each member of the family. He insists the vendetta stay honourable, with no police and no harm to children or civilians.

  Tommy answers with misdirection. He has Arthur fake his death, and at the funeral the widow Changretta approaches under a white flag. She offers to end the vendetta if Tommy signs over everything he owns. In the basement distillery, Tommy reveals he has sent Michael to America to negotiate with Al Capone and turn Changretta's men against him. Arthur steps in and shoots Changretta.

  Afterward Tommy confronts Alfie, who admits he knew Tommy would come for him and says that he has cancer. Tommy shoots Alfie anyway and leaves for his holiday. Alfie's survival will matter much later.

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• 5. The Cursed Sapphire

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  A sapphire changes hands in the third series. Tommy receives it from a Mr. Romanov as payment for killing the impostor Anton Kaledin, played by Richard Brake. He gives it to Grace, who wears it to the Shelby Charity Foundation dinner. There, Grand Duchess Tatiana Petrovna, played by Gaite Jansen, warns that the stone is cursed.

  Tommy tries to persuade Grace to take it off. Then a man shouts "For Angel!" and shoots her dead. Grace was already married to Tommy by then, having wed him in 1924. Before the dinner, Tommy had found a card under his son Charles's pillow declaring the boy dead. It was an early sign that someone was hunting the family.

  Tommy travels to Wales to ask a Romani woman named Bethany Boswell whether the stone is cursed. He leaves the necklace with her and returns home with a feeling that life might be normal again.

  The stone comes back in the sixth series. A girl named Ruby falls ill with consumption and is treated with gold flakes. Convinced a curse has been laid on his family, Tommy follows the sapphire's trail. It leads from Boswell to Evadne Barwell, whose own daughter died at the age of 7. Tommy decides Barwell cursed Ruby in revenge.

  Lizzie Stark meets him at the hospital entrance with the news that the gold salts treatment failed and Ruby has died. Tommy then murders the Barwell family. By then the sapphire has already outlasted Grace, and Tommy's search for its source drags him toward the worst act of his life.

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• 6. Westminster and Mosley

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  When the fourth series closes, Tommy is running for Member of Parliament, and he wins. By 1929 he sits in the House of Commons. In that year, at a telephone booth on Lickey Hills, Arthur reads him a letter from "Angels of Retribution." The senders claim never to have heard of the Peaky Blinders.

  Soon after, news arrives of the US stock market crash. Tommy learns that Michael, who runs the Shelby company in the United States, held on to stock after being told not to. It is also revealed that Tommy has married Lizzie, played by Natasha O'Keeffe.

  At the House of Commons, Tommy meets Sir Oswald Mosley, played by Sam Claflin. Ada tells Tommy that Mosley seems to be moving toward fascism. At a ballet event, Mosley announces to the room that he and Tommy are involved in a new fascist movement, and Tommy plots his murder.

  Tommy visits an asylum to recruit Barney Thomason, played by Cosmo Jarvis, an old comrade from the First World War. He also visits Alfie, who survived the shooting, and asks him to organise a riot as cover. The plot to kill Mosley fails. Barney and Aberama Gold are killed in the chaos.

  A journalist named Mr. Levitt, played by Elliot Cowan, interviews Tommy to damage his image as an MP. Tommy turns the tables with sensitive information of his own, and Levitt is later killed by unknown assailants.

  The bodies of Barney and Aberama are not forgotten, and they come home in the next series.

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• 7. Borrowed Time

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  In a field after the failed plot, Tommy walks off with Arthur. A hallucination of Grace tells him "the work's all done." Tommy screams and points a gun at his own head.

  He survives, and by 1933 he is sober. Captain Swing, played by Charlene McKenna, takes credit for foiling the assassination. She returns the bodies of Barney, Aberama and Polly, who was killed by the IRA. At Polly's funeral Michael swears revenge on Tommy for his part in her death.

  Tommy then sets Michael up for prison on an opium possession charge. He goes on to trade information about English politics with Jack Nelson, a Boston gang leader played by James Frecheville, in exchange for opium.

  Doctor Holford, played by Aneurin Barnard, then tells Tommy that an inoperable tuberculoma gives him between 12 and 18 months left to live. After that, Tommy introduces his newly found son, Erasmus "Duke" Shelby, played by Conrad Khan, at a family meeting. Lizzie dislikes it. Tommy also sleeps with Diana Mitford, played by Amber Anderson, as payment for her cause.

  Diana, with Mosley, tells Lizzie about the affair to split the couple apart. Lizzie leaves, taking Charles. Tommy has the Peaky Blinders dismantle his house and lures the IRA into a trap using the informant Billy Grade. On Miquelon Island he meets the released Michael, and Johnny Dogs switches a car bomb meant for Tommy, killing Michael's associates. Tommy then kills Michael, fulfilling Polly's prediction.

  A month after saying goodbye to his family, Tommy prepares to shoot himself. A vision of Ruby and a partly burnt newspaper showing Holford with Mosley reveal that the diagnosis was false. Tommy goes to kill Holford but spares him, realising he has changed. He watches his wagon and remaining possessions burn, then rides away.

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• 8. Critical Reception

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  Cillian Murphy won the Irish Film and Television Academy award for Best Actor in a Lead Role in Drama in 2017 and 2018. In 2020 he took a National Television Award for Best Drama Performance, beating Jodie Comer and Idris Elba. He won it again in 2022.

  Critics wrote about the character as much as the performance. Emily St. James wrote that calling Murphy magnetic "might be underselling his presence." She added that the show "can't help but sag a little whenever Murphy's not around." Morgan Jeffery praised the character's "movie-star charisma."

  Maureen Ryan put the appeal most plainly. She wrote, "Tommy Shelby may not be a good man, but he's a phenomenally watchable one."

  The character's story is also listed under a title of its own, The Immortal Man.

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