After six seasons of illicit enterprising, morally ambiguous power plays, and plenty of “fucking fighting” occasionally interspersed with heart-wrenching tragedy, the Peaky Blinders saga will draw to an apparent close with a full-length feature film. Following its March 3 premiere in Birmingham, England, where much of the gritty gangster drama is set, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man will screen nationwide in U.S. theaters on March 6 for two weeks before heading to Netflix on March 20.
Set during Germany’s “Blitz” of the United Kingdom at the beginning of WWII—about six years after the events of the show’s finale—a slightly aged Thomas Shelby (Cillian Murphy) returns from his self-imposed exile to face Duke Erasmus (Barry Keoghan), his now-feral and ruthlessly violent gypsy son who’s being recruited by British fascist sympathizer Beckett (Tim Roth) to commit an act of treason that will decide the war for the Axis. From dashing sartorial choices and the evolutionary stage of Tommy’s undercut to the atmospheric music (scored with help from Fontaines D.C. frontman Grian Chatten), every aspect of The Immortal Man will be ceaselessly scrutinized by superfans.
But for those who last saw the show when the final season originally aired in 2022—or haven’t seen it at all—Steven Knight is here to help. The Peaky Blinders creator, who also wrote the screenplay for and executive produced the film, revealed just three episodes that are required viewing for anyone planning to watch The Immortal Man, starting with the series premiere.
“Episode one, series one, really lays out what this whole series is about,” Knight says in a new video released by the Still Watching Netflix YouTube account. “It introduces Tommy Shelby in a way that I think makes it pretty unequivocal about who this person is. We see him riding on a horse in an industrial landscape—no words, just his look, the way he is, and the attitude. It really says so much about what Peaky is going to be about. The whole episode is essential to know exactly what this family is, what they do, and why they are so fearsome.”
Next, Knight advises viewers skip to the Season 2 finale—the twisting Epsom Derby operation that stands out as perhaps the single greatest across 36 episodes.
“[It] features my favorite sequence of the whole series: the moment when Tommy Shelby appears to be about to be shot and killed,” Knight says. “There are three people around him with guns, he’s unarmed, and they’ve already dug his grave. He asks for time to smoke a cigarette and in that moment, he reviews his life, his regrets, and the things he wishes he had done. As an audience, we think maybe this is it, but then there is a twist and he survives. What that gives us is a man who is not sure if he wants to live or die, but in that moment at the end of episode six, we can see that he actually wants to choose life.”
If there’s only time to squeeze in a single Peaky Blinders ep, the series finale has to be it. “The last television episode ties up and resolves a lot of things,” Knight says. “It’s full of surprises, but at the end, it is a resolution of a sort. Tommy is confronted with someone who has attempted to kill and deceive him, and he has a gun in his hand and he can shoot that person, but he decides not to. The Tommy previous to that would have done it. He puts the gun away, goes back to his horse, and he rides away into the sunset.”
These three episodes, according to Knight, will set up any viewer for the proper exploration of Tommy that is The Immortal Man. “There are so many revelations,” Knight concludes, “and more than we’ve ever done, we get to the heart of who Tommy Shelby is—what he wants, who he loves, who loves him, and who hates him. Everything revolves around Tommy Shelby, and this movie really is his movie.”
While no formal reviews are currently available for The Immortal Man, the BBC described an expectedly warm reception from the crowd attending the global premiere at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall. “The ovations were strong and heartfelt, the mutual appreciation, well, blindingly obvious. Two hours later, another unprompted ovation. As the film credits rolled, sustained applause and cheers filled Symphony Hall.”
The biggest cheer, the outlet reports, came after Knight’s remark. “Netflix tell me something like two billion people are going to be watching this and the first thing they see is Birmingham in the caption.” We’ll see if that enthusiasm goes global on March 20.
