The new series from the creator of Peaky Blinders about the birth of two-tone music is full of dramatic tension. But this slow, disappointing show really doesn’t do anything with it.
I’m doing two things that are objectively harmful to my mental health, and that is: watching TikTok and watching The Gentlemen on Netflix. They go hand in hand in a way: “The Gentlemen” on Netflix isn’t all that great (“Alright, Eddie? Kaya Scodelario here. Just gonna drop some exposition on you without moving my face or neck”), so you can half-watch it on TV while half-watching TikTok on your phone, which is very 2024. What my TikTok algorithm gives me is intimate and secretive, but overall it’s like this: American chefs in black nitrile gloves slapping tomahawk steaks before grilling them, Scottish video podcasts where emotionless young men with beards discuss gym supplements, and clips from Peaky Blinders, where Cillian Murphy smokes a cigarette and says little. That’s what your billion-dollar app knows about me. Make of it what you will.
Peaky Blinders somehow works on TikTok, and there may be something in that that explains its extraordinary, electric success the first time around. So many scenes are huge and sincere and dramatic in a way that you wouldn’t predict they’d appeal to a wide audience and boost sales with a flat capitalization by a million percent, but it happened, and most importantly, these dramatic scenes somehow work when they’re cut out of all context, cropped to a 9:16 ratio, and uploaded to your phone. I’ve seen Tommy Shelby stoically flirt with bartenders, hand out cash to poor widows, order murders, and (I’m almost certain?) infiltrate high office in the British government, all without watching more than an episode and a half of the show itself. There always seems to be a sense that in the flashes of Peaky Blinders that I’ve seen, someone is making a move, though in which direction and for what purpose they’re doing it, I never know.
All of this is to say that This Town premieres this week (Sunday, 9 p.m., BBC One), and yes, Peaky Blinders creator Stephen Knight has set up a second epic show amidst the background of the era, afflicted by the Birmingham gang, where everyone either has a Brummie or Irish accent, and they’re all cousins. Your Tommy Shelby this time around is Dante Williams (Levi Brown), a dreamer in a bomber jacket who seems to have taken to introducing himself to people in the most annoying way possible. (From the first episode: “Who are you?” “I write poetry. Sometimes about space.”) His father is a reformed alcoholic, his cousin Bardon (Ben Rose) is trying to avoid the need to join his uncle’s beloved IRA, he’s in love with a girl from the music store, his brother is in Belfast and quite annoying, and people keep throwing petrol bombs while he tries to walk home from college. There’s a high-stakes backdrop here that needs to be utilized – complex relationships in a town devoid of the 80s between multiple races and religions, the clatter of authoritarian boots, the age-old tug-of-war of the working class between the lure of easy crime for money and the dreamy artistry of youth – but this town seems curiously afraid to actually do so. Scenes happen one after another, sure, and they are serious and dramatic. But they never seem connected. They could also be randomly served up through your phone.
The central push of This Town, I must mention, is less ruthless than Blinders: Dante and his quirky cast ultimately (I think?) come together to form a band, and he actually will have sex and do drugs, and tell his brother that he doesn’t want to be a gangster, he wants to put words down like in songs.
