By Flora Carr

Published: Sunday, 20 March 2022 at 12:00 am


Peaky Blinders director Anthony Byrne has teased that Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) has “nothing to lose” going forward in the sixth season, making him “a very dangerous man indeed”.

Speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com about the evolution of the series season-to-season, he revealed that “season 6 is a character piece about the darkness of Tommy Shelby’s soul” – and be warned, there are full spoilers ahead for the season so far.

“There are the obvious issues of grief and mourning that are permeating the season,” noted Byrne. “With particular regard to the death of Polly and the death of Helen McCrory. But then the death of Ruby, which was always in the script, so it’s a double whammy.

“Now that we’ve reached the midpoint of the season, and you’ve kind of now really broken him… [after] episode 3, I was getting a lot of feedback from people, just texts from friends who are not in the business, just going, ‘Oh f**k, this is it, this is the beginning of the end.’ Now he’s going to lose his s**t, basically.”

He continued: “I know obviously what’s going to happen, and they don’t. But you’re kind of going, ‘Yeah, now it’s really kind of unpredictable, because Tommy Shelby, he has nothing to lose’.

“And, you know, a man with nothing to lose, especially somebody like him, is a very dangerous man indeed. So, I think that’s definitely a huge part of what’s going to happen in the next three episodes.”

Peaky Blinders continues tonight (Sunday 20th March) at 9pm on BBC One.

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