You wait a whole lifetime for a lavishly shot, starrily cast, mega-budget gangster drama set in Birmingham to come along. Then when it does, it’s absolute rubbish.
Well, I’m sorry but it is and as a Brummie — near enough: I grew up in a village called Alvechurch, just outside, and I come from a long line of Midlands industrialists — I feel particularly aggrieved by the entirely unjustified acclaim being heaped on the dismal Peaky Blinders (Thursday, BBC2).
Let’s start with the accents. Some sound like a mélange of Liverpool and generic northern; others sound Irish, even when spoken by characters who aren’t supposed to be Irish. The series is set in Small Heath in 1919. Times have changed a bit since then, I’m sure, but Brummagem accents? I doubt it. Birmingham, by then, had had a good three centuries as one of the nation’s industrial epicentres to establish its particular style and voice. More likely in this series they either a) couldn’t be arsed, times being sloppy and voice coaching not being what it was, or b) deliberately chose not to make them real on account of the Brummie accent emerging in numerous polls as Britain’s least popular, or c) they were worried it might jeopardise its chances with the US market.
Then, the sense of place. What we have is generic industrial northern grime with some canals thrown in. Fair enough: Birmingham was bombed to buggery in the war, so they had to do most of the location shooting in places like Manchester. Really, though, apart from the references to the BSA factory — and the fact that a brutal gang called Peaky Blinders (so-called because of the razor blades they concealed in the brims of their flat caps) did once operate out of the city — you could be anywhere.
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