Dir: Robin Bextor. Documentary with: Grant Montgomery, Michael Hogan, Carl Chinn and the voice of Andrew Insol. 61 mins. Cert: 15
Given the global reach of the Peaky Blinders, next month’s Netflix-backed movie threatens to be as momentous as final Downton or new Bridgerton, only with razorblades concealed about its person. This week, that anticipation secures a pay-per-view release for this hour-long, meat-and-potatoes primer, fashioned by Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s dad Robin out of much the same combo of talking heads, drone shots and fair-use clips you’d ordinarily encounter on free-to-air Channel Five. Uppermost in the edit is a recognition that Steven Knight’s creation was one of those Peak TV shows that blurred the televisual and cinematic. Heaven’s Gate, The Godfather and Rio Bravo provide contextualising material; critic Michael Hogan positions the show as Knight’s Once Upon a Time in the West Midlands.
The talk is widescreen, at least, even if the delivery format remains resolutely telly. Bextor’s most illuminating enquiries arrive early on, in addressing how Knight expanded upon stories bequeathed by his parents, inspiring first a concerted attempt to recreate Birmingham’s working-class past and thereafter a modern pop-cultural phenomenon. Production designer Grant Montgomery recalls recycling sets in the show’s formative BBC days; Hogan hails the “rebel music” – the anvil-smashing rock and pop – which helped catch ears as well as eyes. It was a popular sensation before it developed into a network-hopping brand, a subculture endorsed and sustained by those Shelbian undercuts visible everywhere from Balsall Heath to Buenos Aires.
That’s the audience, then, though fans might want someone to pull out a cosh amid the doc’s historical nitpicking – and long for greater VFM besides. Just as Knight’s show became emblematic of an unusually confident moment in UK TV, so this patchwork tribute indirectly reflects today’s mend-and-make-do arts coverage. (In previous eras, Knight’s cultural triumph would surely have merited the full Yentob treatment.) Bextor nevertheless covers a fair bit of turf, taking irrepressible Brum historian Carl Chinn’s walking tour and paying a cautionary visit to the West Midlands Police Museum. Perfunctorily packaged though it all is, there’s even a lesson for the industry to heed going forwards: as Knight puts it, “If you’re not telling the stories of 70% of the population, you’re missing 70% of the story.”
Peaky Blinders - The Real Story will be available to rent digitally from Monday 23rd.
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