This could be excellent
Throughout the four seasons of Peaky Blinders, Steven Knight has never been afraid to dabble in politics. At present, Tommy Shelby is gearing up for life as a Labour MP after being elected in the season finale, while figures like Winston Churchill have also featured in the show.
The IRA have also been very prominent in the show from the start, when Major Campbell (Sam Neill) was sent over to Birmingham by Winston Churchill from Belfast, where he had been “cleaning up” the city of the IRA, Communists, gangs and common criminals.
In Season One, Tommy also planned on sending guns to the IRA in an effort to undermine Campbell’s work and the leader of the Shelby gang ultimately committed murder on behalf of the IRA.
Now, the team behind the beloved crime drama are further developing their interest in Anglo-Irish history in a new series exploring the 1984 bombing of the Grand Hotel during the Conservative party conference.
Margaret Thatcher was the main target of the attack, which killed five people. The blast badly damaged Thatcher’s suite’s bathroom, but left its sitting room and bedroom untouched. She and her husband Denis escaped injury.
Patrick Magee was found guilty of planting the bomb and of five counts of murder – he received eight life sentences – but was released from prison under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
After the attack, the IRA claimed responsibility in a statement that read: “Mrs. Thatcher will now realise that Britain cannot occupy our country and torture our prisoners and shoot our people in their own streets and get away with it. Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always. Give Ireland peace and there will be no more war.”
The next day, Thatcher replied, saying: “That is the scale of the outrage in which we have all shared, and the fact that we are gathered here now — shocked, but composed and determined — is a sign not only that this attack has failed, but that all attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail.”
The series will use fictionalised characters to re-imagine the events and Caryn Mandabach Productions, which produces and owns the rights Peaky Blinders, will make the drama.
The drama will be adapted by Jonathan Lee from his acclaimed best-selling novel High Dive. Eric Roth, Oscar-winning screenwriter of Forrest Gump and Munich, will co-write it.
In terms of the narrative approach, the show will be told through the perspective of a character named Dan, a Belfast boy who wants to join the IRA, and Freya, a young woman who works in the Grand Hotel in Brighton.
As for Season 5 of Peaky Blinders, the show is currently being filmed with a view to airing on BBC One later this year.
