Having committed much of his energy to BBC crime series Peaky Blinders since 2013, Cillian Murphy is perfectly poised to comment on what direction the show is heading next.
Now onto its sixth season, Murphy predicts the show will be denser than what preceded it. “I think it’s going to be very intense,” he told Rolling Stone magazine. “The word we keep using is ‘gothic’. Yeah, it’s going to be heavy!”
The death of Helen McCrory may have influenced the tone of the season. McCrory starred in the first five seasons, leading writer Steven Knight to describe the sixth season as a “challenge” in the wake of her demise. The Irishman‘s Stephen Graham will be joining the cast, although he won’t be sporting the American drawl he used in the Martin Scorsese epic.
“I really wanted to use [Graham] as a character,” Knight revealed, “And there was a particular Scouse character that becomes part of the story – and who else would you cast?”
This season will close out one iteration of the story, but Knight fully intends on continuing the narrative. Originally, Knight had hoped to finish the story on the eve of the Second World War, but Knight feels he can push the characters beyond that point.
“It was always Britain between the wars – how the lesson from one war was not learned and was repeated,” Knight tells Empire. “It’s also the end of empire: we enter the Second World War and by the end of it, there is no empire, really. But I… have revised the scope of what it is. It will now go into and beyond the Second World War. Because I just think the energy that is out there in the world for this, I want to keep it going, and I want to see how this can progress beyond that.”
Whether Cillian Murphy will be involved can only be speculated upon at this moment in time, but Knight is in the process of writing a big-screen treatment for the Peaky Blinders. From there, the possibilities are endless. “I think of this sixth series as the end of the beginning,” Knight teases.
Stream the trailer for season six below.
