Peaky Blinders ran from 2013 to 2022 and turned post-WWI Birmingham into a mythological landscape: sooty canal banks, razor-edged ambition, and a family held together by violence and grief. Creator Steven Knight built the Shelby empire around a simple, irresistible tension: the pull of legitimate power versus the gravity of the criminal world that made it possible. Cillian Murphy's Tommy Shelby became one of the defining anti-heroes of prestige television, a man whose intelligence is his most dangerous weapon and his greatest curse. What fans love is the layering: the period detail, the operatic family dynamics, the way Nick Cave and PJ Harvey tracks turn every slow-motion walk into a statement. If that combination of historical grit, gangster mythology, and psychological intensity is what you are after, the works below cross every medium.
The Same Ruthless Intelligence: Crime Series
TV dramas that share Peaky Blinders' appetite for moral complexity, period atmosphere, and characters who outthink everyone in the room.
Smoke and Menace: Crime Films in the Same Vein
Cinema that captures the same collision of honour codes, political corruption, and spectacular violence.
The Source Material and the Literary Underground
The novels and crime fiction that share Peaky Blinders' preoccupations: working-class ambition, moral rot in high places, and the cost of loyalty.
Power, Crime, and Consequence: Games With the Same DNA
Games that put you inside a world of criminal strategy, period atmosphere, and high personal stakes.
The Show That Made Nick Cave a Set Designer
Peaky Blinders' music direction is a genuine artistic choice, not a quirk. By placing Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Arctic Monkeys, and The White Stripes over 1919 Birmingham, Steven Knight argued that the psychology of the inter-war working class and the psychology of post-punk are the same: survival fury dressed as cool. The anachronistic soundtrack became the show's signature and inspired a generation of period drama to stop worrying about historical authenticity in scoring.
Cillian Murphy and the Tradition of the Thinking Villain
Tommy Shelby belongs to a lineage of fictional men whose intelligence isolates them: Michael Corleone, Jimmy McNulty, Walter White, Tony Soprano. What distinguishes him is the specificity of his damage. The WWI tunnelling scenes are not backstory decoration; they are the engine. The character's PTSD is never framed as weakness, and that refusal to pathologise while still taking trauma seriously set a standard for prestige crime television. Murphy's performance holds every contradiction without explanation.
Boardwalk Empire Did It First, Peaky Blinders Did It Differently
Both shows arrived in the same decade, both are period gangster epics with political ambitions, and the comparison is inevitable. Boardwalk Empire is the wider canvas: Atlantic City, three decades, Steve Buscemi's genius as a man with no warmth left. Peaky Blinders is the narrower focus: one family, one geography, one obsessive central consciousness. Boardwalk Empire is more novelistic; Peaky Blinders is more operatic. Fans of one should watch the other without expecting a copy.
The Novel Boardwalk Empire Never Made: Red Dead Redemption 2
Red Dead Redemption 2 is the closest a game has come to the moral weight of Peaky Blinders. Both are period pieces about outlaws watching their world close around them, both refuse to romanticise violence without sacrificing spectacle, and both centre a protagonist whose loyalty is ultimately more destructive than his enemies. Arthur Morgan and Tommy Shelby would recognise each other instantly. Neither would say a word.
A Century of Gangster Storytelling
- 1931The Public Enemy sets the template for the American gangster film The Public Enemy
- 1969Mario Puzo's novel establishes the code of the crime family The Godfather
- 1972Coppola's film becomes the benchmark for all gangster cinema The Godfather
- 1990Scorsese chronicles the rise and fall of Henry Hill GoodFellas
- 1999The Sopranos begins and redefines prestige television crime drama The Sopranos
- 2002The Wire sets a new standard for systemic crime storytelling The Wire
- 2010Boardwalk Empire brings Prohibition-era gangster politics to HBO Boardwalk Empire
- 2011Mafia II proves the genre can translate to period games Mafia II
- 2013Peaky Blinders premieres and brings the British working-class gang to prestige TV Peaky Blinders
- 2018Red Dead Redemption 2 makes the outlaw-era open world feel morally consequential Red Dead Redemption 2
- 2019Disco Elysium takes detective noir into literary game territory Disco Elysium
- 2022Peaky Blinders ends its six-series run; a feature film is in development Peaky Blinders
Crime dynasties in smoke and shadow
Mafia & Organized Crime
Explore the Mafia & Organized Crime guide →He's not a good man. He never was. But he's the only man for this.Peaky Blinders