Warning: contains spoilers for Peaky Blinders season 5
Peaky Blinders started life as a niche period drama with a name that made people screw up their eyes in confusion and ask Peaky-what?
Now more phenomenon than TV show, the BBC series has a festival, a clothing line, merchandise in your local Boots (honestly. ‘Mrs Tommy Shelby’-emblazoned water bottles and travel mugs are a thing), as well as celebrity fans up the wazoo. Thanks to Netflix, Steven Knight’s story of a working class Birmingham crime family between the wars has gone global.
In January 2021, the show’s creators announced that the sixth season would be the last (previously, there’d been talk of a seventh) but that the world of Peaky Blinders will continue in another form. Feature film? Spin-off series? Theme park? We’ll keep you posted. Filming is now back up and running on the new episodes after a 10-month filming hiatus due to the Covid-19 lockdown. Here’s all the info we have about what to expect.
Peaky Blinders season 6 – The Geek Lowdown
How many seasons are there? Five (and one more on the way to end the story)
Renewed or cancelled? Season six is currently filming
Next season air date confirmed? Not yet, but late 2021 at the earliest
Where to watch? BBC One and Netflix
Created by: Steven Knight. Read our season 5 interview with the creator here.
What happened last time: here are our spoiler-filled season five reviews, here’s a season four recap, and here’s a season three recap.
Peaky Blinders Season 6: a Black Day on the horizon
Peaky Blinders season 6 story: war between Tommy and Michael
At the end of the last run, the BBC released several deleted scenes that cast a little more light on some of the season five goings-on. In this six-minute scene cut from the finale, Polly carries out a gypsy ritual to see the future, which tells her that Michael’s hostile takeover of the Shelby Co. will end in his death, not that his wife Gina’s having any of it.
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“There will be a war in the family, and Michael will die” predicted Polly in the deleted scene above. Are those the words of a bonafide gypsy psychic, or a mother terrified of losing her only son? Season six will tell.
There’s also Tommy’s unfinished business with fascist Oswald Mosley to take care of, along with his local constituents, the Billy Boys, the Chinese opium deal, the threat from the UVF, potential traitor Billy Grade and Tommy’s own tortured psyche. It won’t be a quiet season, we know that much.
Peaky Blinders season 6 cast: Stephen Graham, Gina’s family and the Mitford sisters rumoured
Before the lockdown, Stephen Graham (This is England, The Virtues) was set to join the cast for season six in an as-yet-undisclosed role. Graham won’t be playing Al Capone, it’s been confirmed, despite fans making a connection between the actor’s Boardwalk Empire role and mention of the notorious US gangster at the end of season four.
Read more: did you spot the hidden messages in the Peaky Blinders season 5 sets?
Returning regulars include Cillian Murphy, Helen McCrory, Paul Anderson, Finn Cole, Sophie Rundle and Natasha O’Keeffe, though whether Kate Phillips will return as Arthur’s wife Linda is as-yet unknown. And with their characters’ stories far from finished, season five guest stars Sam Claflin and Anya Taylor-Joy will also be back.
As for new guest stars, Knight has long teased some “quite astonishingly A-list actors who love the show and would love to be in it”. Thus far, the producers have preferred “not to make it a ‘spot the celebrity’ sort of thing,” but with the final season looming, that rule might be relaxed, Knight suggests.
As usual, Steven Knight has written all six episodes of the season, that glorious madman.
Read more: behind the scenes on Peaky Blinders with the official series book.
Peaky Blinders season 6 release date: late 2021 at the earliest
Now that filming is up and running again, we’ll hopefully see the new season later this year. The production delay due to the global spread of COVID-19 cast the schedule of series six into uncertainty, but things are back in action now.
There’s no set seasonal slot for Peaky Blinders, which has aired in summer, autumn and winter before, so all bets are off when it comes to the specific month. After that cliff-hanger ending though, it can’t come soon enough.
Read our spoiler-filled reviews of every Peaky Blinders episode so far, creator, cast and crew interviews and more.
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