Community, Seriality, and the State of the Nation - British and Irish Television Series in the 21st Century

is explored as the site for potential political renewal, albeit in a manner where the contours and parameters of the family stay – perhaps necessarily – amorphous or empty, suggesting that the best hope to be had […] is politically – if not ethically and aesthetically – to cultivate and maintain a conceptual space for novelty [...]. (6-7)

Accordingly, Peaky Blinders highlights the scenes of Ada giving birth to her son, when even Thomas permits to himself show “a heartbeat” (S1/E4, 00:53), and Grace’s announcement of “[a] baby, Thomas” (S2/E6, 00:25). When his secretary Lizzie reveals to Tommy that she is pregnant with his child, he responds: “All this death, Lizzie. Fuck, let’s have some life, right?” (S4/E5, 00:15)

This hope of genuinely new life, intrinsically different from the permanent limbo the Shelbys find themselves in, warrants the family’s paradigmatic status no matter what its constitution. The paradigm of the family in ‘new television’, then, is not sanctified on the basis of a normative ideal conception of the family as community. Its amorphousness does not mean that the family as community ‘fails’; on the contrary, only in the form of a paradox can it be what Shuster has termed the “remaining site of anything that might resemble normative authority” (123). This runs counter to the ethics latent in customary invocations of community, which purport that community is inherently good and thus a norm against which to align our actions. Peaky Blinders , if not ‘new television’ altogether, rewrites those ethics, critical not of community as such, but of the idealisation of community. The family has been the basic template of such idealisation. As a metaphor, it is frequently used to evoke strong collective bonds among members of larger social formations, such as the ‘sisters and brothers’ of the Communist movement or the ‘family of the state’. Such a promise, rather than experience of community, Peaky Blinders demonstrates, is no viable option; salvation will not occur. Lending itself to exploitation, it might be nothing but a capitalist construct.

Fig. 5: The Union Jack divided between Thomas Shelby and Major Campbell (S2/E6, 00:30).

Peaky Blinders ’ subverting metaphor of the Shelby family as representative of the state of the nation, then, paints a picture of a nation in the grip of ruthless capitalism that asserts itself above the law, a situation particularly felt after the financial crisis of 2008.1 In Peaky Blinders as well as in the 21 stcentury, institutions lack authority and reliability, and community appears as a remedy. As the programme shows, however, community as another norm is no such remedy, and yet, if conceived non-normatively, it is something. The Shelby family as the state is open and under-determined; it is not defined by an essential identity but by liminality; and yet, it exists. The final episode of series two shows the last confrontation between Tommy and Major Campbell at the Epsom Derby by arranging them symmetrically underneath a Union Flag decoratively draped (see fig. 5), while outside the national anthem sounds (00:31). The nation is facing a choice between the outlaw and exponent of non-normativity Thomas, and Campbell, representative of the system and its institutions, who declares towards Thomas :“Ahead of you is damnation. But I have the love of God and the certainty of salvation [...].” (00:32) Yet, neither the authority of the church nor the law possess any certainty in Peaky Blinders , Campbell being the most telling example of this “normative breakdown” (Shuster 6) under the conditions of modernity. In an earlier scene, Campbell notes that Thomas and he “are opposites, but also just the same” (S1/E6, 00:11). Thomas, however, counters that ,“You forget, Inspector. I have my family” (00:12).

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Peaky Blinders . Series 2. Written by Steven Knight. Directed by Colm McCarthy. BBC Studios, 2014.

Peaky Blinders . Series 3. Written by Steven Knight. Directed by Tim Mielants. BBC Studios, 2016.

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