WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS
Titled Sapphire, with reference to the cursed gem that Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) believes to be the source of so much of his misery, this was a subdued episode that opened with a child’s funeral and got more downbeat from there. It felt like the calm before the storm as the final reckoning for Tommy and his clan beckons. Read on for more spoiler-laden discourse . . .
Gold doesn’t work
The episode opened with the funeral of Tommy and Lizzie’s young daughter Ruby, a grief-stricken affair soundtracked by Sinéad O’Connor’s sorrowful In this Heart. The funeral cortège walked past industrial chimneys spewing smoke, with Ruby’s coffin in a horse-drawn carriage, her name spelt out in roses. “She deserved a golden carriage, but we didn’t afford ourselves that luxury. Because gold doesn’t work,” said Tommy in his tribute, a reference to the gold salts the doctors had used to try to save Ruby’s life and the gold that Tommy offered his gypsy sister-in-law, Esme (Aimee-Ffion Edwards), to help him lift the curse on his family. “In her name and in her memory things will change,” Tommy continued. “Whatever comes down that river from now on, we will make good.” His eulogy suggested that he was going to clean up the family business. His actions as the episode unfolded suggested the exact opposite. “The devils who did this will pay, Ruby,” Tommy said. He was true to his word in that instance.
● Peaky Blinders series 6, episode 3 recap
● Peaky Blinders series 6, episode 2 recap
I’m here on behalf of the blue sapphire
Retribution was swift. Tommy strode into a gypsy camp and proclaimed: “I’m here on behalf of the blue sapphire,” before unleashing a volley of bullets, gunning down Evadne Barwell and three men who tried to defend her. After wasting most of the last episode on Tommy’s futile quest to get the curse lifted, it was a relief that this bit of business was out of the way early. But it was brutal. Did Tommy feel any better? He sobbed after smashing up the gun used to commit the cold-blooded murders, so the answer is probably not.
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A daughter lost, a son found
Esme had a bombshell for the grieving dad. “Spirits just took away your child,” she told him. “The same spirits want to give you a different child.” Before Tommy went to France in May 1914 he had a fling with a woman at a fair.They “slept together under a hazel tree” and the result of their union was “a boy born with hazel eyes”. Tommy looked on as a strapping young lad who called himself Duke tended to a horse. “He is yours,” Esme told him. “I’ll tell him that Tommy Shelby can offer a man far, far more than big wheels and carousels.” Was Tommy ready to gain a son so soon after losing a daughter? We didn’t see any more of Duke in this episode, but the character is played by Conrad Khan (the star of the gritty 2019 drama County Lines) and his name appears in a large font in the closing credits, so he will have a part to play.
Did the woman you killed have children?
Back chez Shelby, Lizzie (Natasha O’Keeffe) was raging about Tommy’s revenge mission. He tried to placate her with talk of setting up a fund to “study the causes and cures of consumption”, but she wasn’t happy about him taking lives in their daughter’s name. “I killed a woman and three men,” Tommy said, like he was in the confessional and Lizzie was his priest. “And their bodies will be thrown aboard the boat like all the other bodies . . . but I am stepping off that boat and onto another boat. D’YOU UNDERSTAND?!” Did you? If it was a metaphor for Tommy choosing a different path it was a strange one.
There was no singing
And if Tommy was on a righteous path, he was taking the scenic route. The fascists came to dinner in a disturbing scene that started with the IRA’s Laura McKee (Charlene McKenna) being forced to sing a rebel song (The Black Velvet Band) while they waited for Tommy. Diana Mitford (Amber Anderson) wanted to stress the importance of what they were involved in and recounted a hideous tale of a meeting with Hitler and his cohorts in Berlin. “There was no singing. No giggling. And when breakfast was served on a terrace overlooking the mountains, they brought up some Jews. And while we ate our eggs they were forced to eat grass and we watched as we sipped our coffee.” (There is some truth in this anecdote, but it was Diana’s sister Unity who told a friend about this particularly cruel form of after-dinner entertainment.)
It’s me who has the ear to the president of the United States
So to business. Jack Nelson (James Frecheville) was quick to remind the gathering that “it’s me who has the ear to the president of the United States”. And yes, there were things that Oswald Mosley (Sam Claflin’s Mosley is such a panto villain that you expect his every utterance to be accompanied by booing) wanted him “to whisper in the president’s ear”. “Tell him we are England, we are the mood England is in,” Diana purred. But would Tommy, as Mosley suggested, resign his party whip and run as an independent? Jack was keen to find out how committed Tommy was to the cause and Mosley instructed Tommy to “prove it, physically”. Thomas Shelby MP, socialist and man of the people, obliged with a Nazi salute and the chilling proclaimation: “Perish Judah.” “Since you have proven your commitment in a most extraordinary way, Boston is now officially open for the importation of your merchandise,” Nelson said. Extraordinary indeed. Tommy got what he wanted, but at what cost to his already blackened soul? We’d soon find out.
Information is more useful to Mr Churchill if it is word for word
After the meeting, Tommy hammered away at his typewriter. “Why didn’t you come to bed?” Lizzie asked, perhaps thinking that he might have needed a cuddle after fraternising with pure evil. “I’m typing up my recollection of the meeting,” he said. “If I do it straight away I can quote people word for word. Information is more useful to Mr Churchill if it is word for word.” Talk about having your cake and eating it. So let’s get this straight — Tommy is pretending to be a Nazi so that he can sell his opium in Boston, then pass on any intel he gathers about what the fascists are up to to Winston Churchill. And when he found out that Gina Gray (Anya Taylor-Joy) was Mosley’s bit on the side, he even tried to rope her in to informing on her lover. As plans go it’s bulletproof, right?
You have defeated many enemies
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All the way through the episode a letter from the sanatorium for Tommy, marked urgent, remained unopened. When he finally plucked up the courage to read its contents, the news was devastating. While no tuberculosis had been found in his lungs, the scan had revealed a shadow at the base of his skull. It wasn’t cancer, it was a tuberculoma — a growth caused by the same bacteria as TB. The symptoms included seizures, bouts of weakness and hallucinations. It wasn’t infectious, but it was inoperable. “As the tumour grows, the rate of physical and mental deterioration will increase,” Dr Holford (Aneurin Barnard) told him. “Eventually you will need people around you constantly who love you very much.” Good luck with that, Tom. “I understand that you have defeated many enemies, Mr Shelby,” the doc concluded. “Now you have a new one, inside you. You cannot defeat it.” So how long did he have? One year, perhaps 18 months. Just enough time to flog the opium, fund research into TB, bond with his new son and defeat the fascists. There are two episodes left, but how much of that we will bear witness to only the showrunner, Steven Knight, knows.
Arthur Watch
After a glimmer of hope last week that Arthur (Paul Anderson) might be on the rise again, the death of his niece led him back to opium. Before delivering his eulogy at Ruby’s funeral, Tommy had approached Arthur claiming he was unable to speak the words he had written. “You’re the oldest. Speak them for me,” he said. Tommy seemed more than capable; it was a test of Arthur’s sobriety which big bruv failed. Arthur turned up at Tommy’s house later to apologise for not speaking. “The junk, Tom . . . fucks up your mind,” Arthur said. “You was already fucked up,” Tommy reminded him. After four years off the booze Tommy succumbed, sipping whisky as he eulogised the memory of the old Arthur and how he once fought a load of coppers armed only with a boat hook. “You’ll stop because the family needs you to,” Tommy said. “You will change your ways . . . And I’ll change the f***ing world.” Last week it was Hayden Stagg giving Arthur a reality check, this week it was his little brother. Neither got through to him and the last we saw of Arthur he was violently robbing an opium den in Chinatown. Arthur was still a diminished figure and the series is poorer for it.
Line of the week
“Not a devil. Just an ordinary mortal man” Tommy comes to terms with his life-changing diagnosis
Peaky Blinders series 6 continues on BBC1, Sundays, 9pm; previous series are on Netflix
