Posts Tagged ‘television’

By John Ruberry

Earlier this month Season 5 of Peaky Blinders arrived on Netflix. If you haven’t heard of the BBC show, it centers on a Gypsy organized crime gang from Birmingham, England.

The Peaky Blinders are named for the razor blades the actual hoodlums,-they were an 1890s gang–wore in their flat caps.

The television Peaky Blinders, who usually refer to themselves as the Shelby Company, Ltd., are led by Thomas “Tommy” Shelby (Cillian Murphy), a World War I veteran. The first season takes place in 1919, Season 5 begins in the auspicious year of 1929.

Tommy, at the end of Season 4, is elected to Parliament as a member of the Labour Party.

A new season of course brings a new primary villain, this time it’s Sir Oswald Mosley (Sam Claflin), a minor member of the British nobility who also sits in the House of Commons. If you are American, it’s likely that you’ve never heard of Mosley, but he’s one of the most notorious figures of 20th century Great Britain. He didn’t go as far as Benedict Arnold did during the American Revolution, but had the Nazis defeated Britain in World War II, it’s probable that Mosley would have been prime minister—with Edward VIII restored to the throne. A 2005 poll of British historians determined that Mosley was the Worst Briton of the 20th century. Jack the Ripper took the title for the 19th. Mosley not surprisingly was a virulent anti-Semite.

Sir Oswald pursues Tommy as an ally while Winston Churchill (Neil Maskew) does the same. Maskew is the third actor to portray Churchill in this series. What’s up with that?

The Black Tuesday Wall Street Crash puts pressure on the rest of the Blinders, particularly Michael Gray (Finn Cole), who in the first episode of the season awakens from a stupor in Detroit to learn that the Shelby Company money he invested in America has evaporated. He wants a bigger say in the family business, as does his American wife (Anya Taylor-Joy). The family matriarch, Polly Gray (Helen McCrory), Michael’s mother, continues to struggle to keep the family from tearing itself apart, and their battles now directly effect her lover, Aberama Gold (Aidan Gillen). Tommy’s older brother, Arthur, continues to battle his “animal inside me.” While Tommy and Mosley, politically speaking, court each other, the Peaky Blinders face a new foe, the Billy Boys, a Scottish Protestant gang, who joyously sing their fight song, which is based on the melody of “Marching Through Georgia.” The Billy Boys hate Gypsies and Catholics–the Shelbys are both.

Peaky Blinders has always played loose with history. Lighten up, though, it’s fiction!

On the other hand…

As 1929 winds down, Mosely announces the formation of a new political party, the British Union of Fascists. But after leaving Labour, the real Mosley first formed another new party, called, well, the New Party. After that came his fascist party. I bring this up because in his introductory speech as leader of the BUF, Mosley, complaining about Indian competition forcing the closing of British textile mills, sounds a bit like Donald Trump, with a dash of UK Independence Party founder Nigel Farage thrown in. I’m not a fan of historical parallels with the present, particularly when it comes to individuals. And I get it, many people believe in “Orange Man Bad.” But sheesh, can TV scriptwriters give us a break from that for once?

I see Season 5, quality wise, as a step back for Peaky Blinders, but better than the Russian sinkhole two seasons back. But a Season 6 apparently is in the works, and maybe even a seventh. And perhaps we will see a couple of other men portray Churchill. The 1930s offers many plotlines as the world marches again to war. Still, even a below-par Peaky Blinders is worth your time.

Peaky Blinders is rated MA. It contains graphic violence, drug use, and overt sexual activity.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

You know it when you dream that your wife has taken you to a shop that specializes in Doctor Who stuff and in the dream the owner hands you a 14 foot Tom Baker Scarf and you wake up just as he hands it to you and am about to put it on!

You would think at age 47 I wouldn’t wake up with a huge smile at that point but I did. Sometimes I think men at heart never stop being kids. (The proof is yesterday my youngest got the Complete Three Stooges Yesterday and when he went to call his 55-year-old uncle to tell him his delight that same uncle shared his own delight at the very same gift!)

Speaking of which don’t think we didn’t notice that during yesterday’s Doctor Who Christmas special A Christmas Carol (which BBC America sneakily put on at the same time as my show, so I had to watch the steam online several hours earlier) that the little kid was wearing a Baker scarf at one point given to him by the 11th Doctor.

Other than the opening which makes Christmas simply the “winter solstice” (consist with the praying to Santa nonsense in The Eleventh Hour and the ignoring of the consequences of non-timelords meeting themselves in a time-line (Maudwin Undead) it was a cute sentimental story that is very enjoyable.

However I didn’t find it timeless, I have a nasty feeling that Steven Moffat is stuck on the same gimmick and can’t get off of it. You will like it but will you want to watch it again and again?

There’s the rub.

…”would you be so damn tolerant then?”

Those are the words of Kitty Pride in the old X-Men Graphic novel: God loves, man kills that came out in my college days. They are provocative words and I use them uncensored deliberately and without apology for two reasons in this post.

#1 Because I loathe this N-word nonsense, I’ll not be intimidated by any word.

#2 Because of the important point that is to be made.

There are times when we allow the shifts in culture and rules to take place unchallenged. We allow what is crass and wrong a pass because we have reached a point in culture that we are so used to it that we don’t notice it. We say it is no big deal and decide that we are being humorless if we take offense.

Part of the blame and credit go to the Genius of Monty Python. They created some of the best and most timeless comedy that has ever or will ever be created by ignoring every sacred cow that has ever existed and doing so with such intelligence that it affected a generation of comedy writers who frankly are unlikely to ever achieve the level of sheer greatness that they did.

Unable to match their intelligence they have attempted to out-gross them. They have not decided to just ignore sacred cows, they have decided to slaughter them and serve their steaks in a white wine sauce with shallots, oysters and a sort of fine pureed beets that are rarely made available for the average table.

The end result is that people recognize the carcass of the sacred cow and admire the audacity of the act of slaughter, the neatness of the table setting and the boldness of serving white wine with a beef dish…without realizing that although they have surpassed Python in the abattoir; in the respect that matters for comedy, actual humor they fail remaining lesser sons of greater fathers.

Which brings us again in a very round about way to this post by Cynthia Yockey.

Gov. Palin ALONE, of ALL politicians, is expected to be gracious and/or silent when her children and husband are attacked by the Left. Then, regardless of how she responds, she is then attacked by everyone else. Basically, everyone thinks it is safe to attack Gov. Palin through her children. No, no, a thousand times, NO! We are entering the campaign season — we must not permit the tactic of getting at our candidates through their children to go unchecked and unpunished.

Instead, what conservatives must do is commit to protecting our politicians’ families. Making a big show at the beginning of such an enterprise saves untold labor later. So I suggest we vaporize anyone and everyone who even looks at our candidates’ children funny until the correlation between unacceptable behavior and immersion into a world of pain is clear to all and sundry.

We must protect our politicians children and families not only because it is the right thing to do, but also because our best candidates will leave public service and its marketplace of ideas, or never enter it, if we do not protect their loved ones. They simply cannot do this alone.

It is a very rare time when I take any person’s side over a person as wise as the anchoress but after talking to Cynthia today and after re-reading what was written I have to come to the conclusion that Cynthia is correct here.

One of the left’s most valued methods is to allow a standard that would normally not be allowed otherwise to stand. It is a standard that has actually been used against us in the war on terror, to wit: Al Qaeda has the ability to decide to fight outside the rules of the Geneva convention (which they have not signed) while we are expected to fight within them although they as a non signatory have no rights under the treaty.

I was prepared to allow this because Family Guy does all kinds of things that I don’t like, it is just the way they are, but then that’s when it hit me, by giving this pass I am desensitizing myself to it and allowing the standards that I operate by to be altered without question.

Cynthia raised the relevant point: If this was President Obama’s children the media would NOT have given it a pass, but more importantly Family Guy (unlike southpark) would not even dream of doing that, they would self censor before allowing such an insult. In addition the media and the left will not give her any credit for giving this a pass, instead they will consider it a bound that is acceptable and then push the next one. As a former person of the left Cynthia recognizes this and will not permit it. She is correct.

So in this case I have to have the same reaction that Stevie had after Kitty made the statement that is the title of this post:

Peter Rasputin: “Kitty was upset Stevie, she didn’t think about what she she was saying. She didn’t mean…

Steve: (From within a thought balloon) Of course she did my friend, she meant every word. And she was right

We are simply not going to win any political arguments by hoping to earn brownie points for decorum.