Narrative Analysis: Peaky Blinders

 For this assignment, I am supposed to analyze a film to learn more about the narrative. This will help me to learn more about how stories are structured, why certain characters are included, and what conflicts/ themes to include. I will use this information to incorporate it into my final project. This will help me to create a strong narrative so the story behind my film makes sense.  

For this assignment, I am choosing to analyze the show Peaky Blinders.  

• The premise of the plot is a gang of men who are Irish, English, and Romanian. This show takes you through the story of this gang throughout the 1920s and 1930s. It begins with the gang taking control of the city while the citizens are in their most vulnerable state, post WWI, and takes you through their lives until the end. Here, the main character, Thomas Shelby, is ready to commit suicide, but then return to the city, due to the vision he has of his dead daughter telling him he needs to live.  
• The main theme of this show is that resorting to violence and gaining too much power this way can have harsh consequences. Other main ideas expressed throughout the show include death, revenge, grief, family, love, conspiracy, and power.  
• The first few seasons of the show focus on the direct effects of WWI on average working-class citizens, and how the Shelby family and their gang take control of the people. However, as the seasons continue, it shows Thomas Shelby trying to get away from his life of crime and become a serious businessman and eventually, a politician. 
• The narrative is built around conflict. The first conflict is that WWI has just ended, and middle-class citizens are struggling to get back on their feet. This war has caused the main conflict that the entire show is based on. Besides this, every episode is based on conflicts between Thomas Shelby, the Shelby family, and other gangs/ rich people who want them dead or out of power. In the end, Thomas Shelby finds out he has a brain tumor. However, this conflict turns from Man vs. Nature to Man vs. Man when he realizes the doctor who diagnosed him was friends with one of his enemies and the illness was a lie.  
• The protagonist of this show is Thomas Shelby, and the antagonist is Oswald Mosley. The entire Shelby family is there to help Thomas in his gang and in his personal life. However, there are also other characters that are there to enhance the plot and show Thomas’s personal character development. This includes Grace Burgess, Polly Gray, Alfie Solomons, Billy Kimber, Michael Gray, and Luca Changretta.