Full cast announced for BBC Drama ‘Peaky Binders’

The full cast of new BBC Two post-war Birmingham gangster drama, Peaky Blinders has been announced as the six-part series begins filming in Birmingham, Leeds and Liverpool.

Joining lead Cillian Murphy (Inception, The Wind That Shakes The Barley, 28 Days Later) is a stellar cast starring: Sam Neill (The Tudors, The Piano, Jurassic Park), Helen McCrory (Hugo, Harry Potter, The Queen).

The cast also features Annabelle Wallis (Snow White And The Huntsman, The Tudors), Iddo Goldberg (Secret Diary Of A Call Girl) and Charlie Creed-Miles (Nil By Mouth, Wild Bill).

The story begins in 1919 in the lawless slum neighbourhoods of post war Birmingham. Returning soldiers, newly-minted revolutionaries and criminal gangs all fight for survival in an industrial landscape gripped by economic upheaval. Guns smuggled home from the trenches find their way onto the streets and become lethal currency. Communists don’t just dream of revolution – they are planning for it and the Government is expecting it. As Churchill mobilizes his Special Branch forces, illegal bookmakers make fortunes in speak-easy betting shops and traumatised infantrymen drink away their shell-shock in riotous ale houses.

There is still a gentler city at the fringes, where gypsies and canal boatmen deal horses and tell fortunes but sitting at the top of this industrial jungle are the extended Shelby family, whose many brothers and sisters, cousins and uncles, make up the fiercest gang of all, the ‘Peaky Blinders’. Named for their practise of sewing razor blades into the peaks of their caps, the Peaky Blinders make their money from off track betting, protection and robbery.

Their boss Tommy Shelby (Murphy) is the most ruthless brother of them all, but his leadership is about to be put to the test. A ruthless new Police Chief C.I. Campbell (Neill) arrives in town from Belfast to clean up the city and, perhaps more lethally, a beautiful woman Grace Burgess (Wallis) arrives in the neighbourhood with a mysterious past and a dangerous secret. McCrory plays Aunt Polly Gray, the Shelby family matriarch.

This is the first TV drama by series creator Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things and Eastern Promises) who says: “The story I want to tell is based on family legend and historical fact. It is a fiction woven into a factual landscape which is breathtakingly dramatic and cinematic, but which for very English reasons has been consigned to historical text books.”

Controller BBC Drama Commissioning, Ben Stephenson, says: “Building on BBC Two’s reputation for world-class drama, Peaky Blinders is a phenomenally authored drama series shedding light on a piece of hidden British history. Authentic, bloody and utterly compelling, Peaky Blinders welcomes Steven Knight and Otto Bathurst to BBC Two and adds another boldly crafted drama to our roster of upcoming shows.”

Peaky Blinders will air on BBC Two in 2013.