In anticipation of the long-awaited Season 5 of Peaky Blinders,

we thought it would be good to catch everyone up on what's happened with the Shelby family

and their gang over the past several years.

It has been quite a tumultuous time, after all.

Right then, so, we're going to run through the main characters of Season 1 before we dive in,

and we're going to do it quickly.

Very, very quickly.

And here we go:

Tommy Shelby is the second oldest brother, in charge of the family

and more importantly, the family business.

And for the sake of summary and concision here,

he's the main character of this particular program.

Arthur Shelby is the eldest brother, and Tommy's right-hand man.

John Shelby is the third oldest, and he is also deeply involved in the family business.

Then we've got the sister, Ada Shelby,

her communist fiancé, Freddie Thorne,

and also their aunt Polly Gray.

Polly ran the business while the three boys were over in France fighting the Huns.

On the other side of the fence you've got Chief Inspector Chester Campbell,

who is a massive prick to the Shelby family,

his beautiful undercover agent, Grace Burgess,

and the racetrack-running gangster, Billy Kimber,

who – if we're being forthright here – is also a fairly huge prick.

Oh, and also, they're called the “Peaky Blinders” because they sew razorblades

into the brims of their caps to use as a weapon.

Properly badass.

OK, onto the meat of the matter.

We start in 1918 Birmingham, England

in the charming neighborhood of Small Heath,

with the Shelby family,

an Irish-Romani family of bookmakers.

But you already know about them.

As we discussed, the three eldest brothers run the Shelby Company Limited

after all returning from fighting in France during the Great War–

you probably know it as World War I,

where Tommy won several medals for valor.

Birmingham is an industrial and downright gritty place,

and most of the people who live there are hard laborers–

steel workers and boatsmen and the like.

But not the Shelbys.

The Shelbys have shirked their humble beginnings

and are de-facto bosses of the city in which they were raised.

Tommy wants to knock off the main racetrack bookmaker in the region,

Billy Kimber, to make the Blinders the largest bookmaking operation around,

and sets out an elaborate plan to enact this.

Beginning, of course, with stealing an enormous cache of machine guns–

which are quite new and fancy and very hard to come by at this time–

as well as a full lorrie's worth of ammunition, from the local BSA factory.

Since it is suspected that the Peaky Blinders were behind the robbery,

“If you see any guns,

check the serial numbers against that list.”

the IRA, communists, and British government (in the form of Major Campbell)

are all in town looking for them,

and looking for them very hard indeed.

With great purpose.

“What bloody guns, Tommy?”

Now at this juncture, Tommy purposely starts a war with the Lees,

another travelling Romani family,

and proceeds to use the hidden guns as leverage to play all the parties off against each other.

“What's our mission, boy?”

“To stick it to the Lee family, Arthur!”

Basically, everyone wants the guns,

but only Tommy knows where they are hidden away,

and well, you get the idea.

He's basically untouchable under this particular arrangement.

“I'm in your hands, completely.”

“But if you marry her,

our family and the Lee family will be united forever,

and this war will be over.

Now, it's up to you, John.

War... or peace.”

But after an encounter with the IRA at the Peaky-owned pub,

The Garrison goes awry and ends with two extremely dead Irishmen on the floor.

Tommy is betrayed by his barmaid Grace,

who as I mentioned earlier was an undercover officer

working for the Chief Inspector and the fuckin' Crown.

So the government recovers the guns, effectively destroying his hand.

Tommy is properly fucked.

With the investigation into the missing guns all wrapped up,

Major Campbell declares his love for Grace,

but she rejects him

as he later learns that she has fallen for Tommy during her time undercover.

Which, of course, the Major is not too pleased to hear.

With the IRA dealt with

and Winston Churchill recalling the Chief Inspector to London,

but also with no leverage to speak of,

the Shelby family seeks a new way to protect themselves from Kimber

and his frankly much larger operation.

After much rumination and whiskey,

Tommy settles on John marrying a Lee daughter–

unbeknownst to John, unfortunately.

But meaning that the Shelbys and the Lees are now allied–

which is fantastic news from an organizational-security standpoint.

“Yeah, all right.”

The boys seek to stand off against Kimber at the racetracks way out of town,

but are betrayed again,

and with the Lee clan en route to the wrong location,

Kimber and his men come to Birmingham, right to Small Heath,

to kill the Blinders.

And of course there are no coppers about

because Major Campbell has recalled them all from the streets.

A tense standoff in the street is ended when Kimber opens fire,

clipping Tommy and killing Danny Whizbang, a good man.

Tommy promptly puts a bullet in Kimber's head,

declares that they had fought this war one-on-one,

and that Kimber had lost.

Everyone then disperses.

Now for the big Season 1 cliffhanger,

which I for one don't think anyone saw coming.

In the final scenes, we see Detective Campbell,

humiliated and furious that Grace has fallen for Tommy and not him,

raise his pistol to her face on the train tracks,

cutting to black before we hear a single gunshot.

What the fuck?

Did he kill her?

Apparently, we will have to wait.

But no need to wait too long because, hey, we're already back with Season 2 of Peaky Blinders,

or at least a brief little retelling of it.

We've got all the same characters as Season 1, with a few new additions:

Finn Shelby, who is no longer a small child but a teenager,

nearly a man, learning the family business.

Michael Gray, Polly's estranged son,

and Esme Lee, now Shelby, the shotgun bride of John from the previous season.

We've also got Alfie Solomons, the leader of the Jewish gang down in London,

and of course, Darby Sabini,

the volatile leader of the Italian gang that controls most of England's capital city,

and just a nasty little fellow all-around.

Remember a few minutes ago when I told you that Chief Inspector Campbell tried to shoot Grace at the train station?

Well, guess what?

That sneaky lass has a hidden purse-gun and she shot first,

seriously – but not mortally – wounding him such that he walks with a limp and a cane now.

Sometimes that's the way it goes.

And he's a complete tosser anyways.

So, onto the main event.

Several years later, we find the Peaky Blinders in Birmingham's Small Heath,

with Shelby Company Limited running smoothly and making a lot of money.

But almost immediately – and I mean, like, first few minutes of Episode 1 –

The Garrison, Tommy's pub, is blown up by the IRA,

who, it turns out, are interested in having him commit a murder on their behalf.

Hell of a way to get a man's attention.

Tommy also decides that this, of all times, is the time for the Blinders to move into London,

where the rival Italian and Jewish gangs are engaged in a brutal turf war.

Suffice to say, there's a lot going on for the Shelbys at the moment...

“You blew up my pub.”

...which is not lost on Polly and Esme,

who are not really on board with the rapid expansion plans that Tommy has unilaterally begun.

On a brighter note, Tommy discovers the child that Polly had taken from her when she was young,

a teenager named Michael,

and the two are – with some trouble – reunited.

“I think she might be my mother.”

After a tense negotiation, Tommy agrees to ally with Alfie Solomons and his Jewish gang,

and the Blinders start taking over London swiftly and without mercy.

To borrow a phrase from Mr. Sabini,

Alfie had “invited a horde of wild animals, and unlocked the fucking gates.”

“My face is the last thing you'll ever see on earth.”

In the meantime, a faction of the IRA has allied themselves with Major Campbell,

who is tasked by Winston Churchill with the assassination of a British military official,

and who has decided that Tommy is to be the triggerman.

“There are fucking rules for a fucking reason.

Quite simply they have to be obeyed.

All right?”

The gang heads to London to buy a horse and carry out the task at hand,

“Thomas Shelby!”

and are attacked by Sabini's men, killing or wounding all of the assassins.

As it turns out, Sabini's triggermen were no match for Arthur and John's rage.

“The pro-treaty Paddies and the King want the same man dead.”

After a night of violent revenge against Sabini,

“This place is under new management

by order of the Peaky Blinders.”

the Blinders are betrayed by Alfie in favor of Sabini,

and Arthur is framed in London for the murder of Billy Kitchen, a Blinders lieutenant,

and sentenced to the gallows.

Back in Birmingham, Michael is arrested by Campbell due to the spite he holds for Tommy and his brothers.

Tommy is able to strike a deal with Major Campbell for Michael and Arthur's freedom,

even though his eventual plan is to betray Tommy upon the completion of his assasination task.

You see, Campbell is intent on blaming the assassination on a specific faction of the IRA,

which would spark an all-out civil war back in Ireland.

John blows up the residence of Tommy's target,

making it possible to move the actual assassination to the location of Sabini's biggest horse race.

At the race, Tommy is approached by Grace,

who has returned from America to tell him that the child she is pregnant with is his.

Tommy departs to kill the military official,

while Polly corners and kills Major Campbell with a single shot to the heart.

“Don't fuck with the Peaky Blinders.”

The ensuing panic draws all the police away from the track,

and the Blinders move in to take over the betting operations.

Unfortunately, Tommy is abducted by three IRA members in police uniforms,

under the orders of the now-deceased Campbell.

But as he stands over a rural grave, waiting to be shot,

one of his would-be assassins shoots the other two,

informing Tommy that Churchill still needs him in the future.

Overwhelmed with emotion,

Tommy sets off home to propose to Grace,

telling no one of what just happened.

And there we have Season 2.

You get to catch up on it right fuckin' away, don't you?

You lucky bastards.

As we open on Season 3, two years later, things are going very well for our boy Tommy.

He lives in a palatial estate outside of the city – I mean this thing looks like a proper castle –

and it is the day of his wedding to the love of his life, Grace.

The wedding is beautiful and joyous, but at the reception following the ceremony,

we learn that Tommy has business plans tonight, too,

plans with the Russians.

And a little killing, too.

For students of history, around this time there was something in Russia called the Bolshevik Revolution.

Communists took over the government, created the USSR, and oh yes,

killed off as much of the Royal Family as they could find.

Some of the Romanovs managed to escape to the West,

and these are the ones Tommy finds himself meeting with on his wedding night.

The Russians tell him they are interested in protection,

given their precarious political standing in the country,

and while feigning poverty for the government,

have a copious amount of jewels and treasure they smuggled into the country.

As payment, Tommy is offered a truly enormous sapphire necklace, which he gives to his new wife, Grace.

Prior to the wedding, the Blinders burn down an Italian-owned shop in town,

to dissuade its owner, Angel Changretta, from attending the wedding as Lizzie's date.

Angel's father confronts them about this,

and John responds by blinding Angel.

This will come up again in a bit.

Around this same time, Tommy is approached by a priest,

a very odd priest who claims to represent a very odd group: The Oddfellows.

The Oddfellows, otherwise known as the Economic League, is a shady group of wealthy right-wing elites in Britain,

who are very interested in making sure that labor movements like that of the Bolsheviks don't take hold in the West.

In Tommy's case, they are supposedly interested in facilitating an arms deal

between the Blinders and the Russians, but we'll talk more about that later.

At a party the following evening, Tommy is laughingly informed by the Russian princess, Tatiana,

that the necklace he has been paid with bears a curse.

He rushes to find Grace, who is wearing it,

but it is too late,

and an Italian gunman hired by Angel fires a shot meant for Tommy directly into her heart.

Furious, Tommy retreats to his home,

but not before sending John and Arthur out to kill Angel and his parents.

But since Mrs. Changretta had been the boys' schoolteacher growing up in Small Heath,

they allow her to leave on the condition she not tell Tommy.

Tommy plans to torture the old man,

but Arthur takes pity, and puts a bullet in his head before he can.

Meanwhile, Tommy sits down with the Russians to negotiate the terms of the planned arms deal.

With the help of Alfie, an accord is struck whereby the Blinders will be given 70,000 pounds in jewelry

in exchange for a fleet of armored tanks.

But it quickly becomes clear that Tommy has larger plans than that –