‘Peaky Blinders’ Recap, Season 3, Episode 2: Pervy Priests And The Worst Jewelry Gift Ever

Alright you Anglophiles, brew up a pot of PG Tips and bust open a package of HobNob biscuits, because everybody’s favorite British hipster period piece gangster family drama is back. That’s right, season 3 of Peaky Blinders debuted on Netflix this week and you can now binge watch the current season to your hearts content.

When we left off in episode 1, head Peaky (or is it head Blinder?) Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) had married his season 1 sweetheart and Baby Mama Grace Burgess (Annabelle Wallis) and, like any good mobster, used the wedding as an opportunity to secure a lucrative new criminal endeavor. Slight hitch, he’s doing it under duress because the government has his number and saved his ass from the firing squad last season. But hey, who am I to rain on the parade when anyone who’s ever been to England will tell you how much it rains over there already?

The gist is this; at the behest of members of a right wing shadow organization called The Economic League, A.K.A. Section D, the Peaky Blinders will supply arms to a group of Russian expatriates who plan to mount a revolt in Soviet Georgia to defeat the ruling Bolsheviks. That it took me two viewings of the first two episodes to figure all this out is a moot point. Maybe. The Economic League’s emissary is Father John Hughes, a thoroughly unlikable and possibly pedophiliac priest played by veteran British actor Paddy Considine. This character replaces Sam Neill’s Major Campbell, who Aunt Polly (Helen McCrory) offed last season, as villainous face of the establishment. Did I say possibly pedophiliac priest? More like, no he’s totally a pedophile, as he alludes to visiting Tommy and Grace’s children’s charity when it opens. At night. After a few drinks. Creepy stuff.

“If I want to play the squire in your place of false charity, then I will,” he tells Tommy, adding “Ambition for respectability doesn’t make you a saint.” Religious references abound in this episode. At another point Tommy says “There is Hell and there is another place below Hell.” I’ve always felt though that Peaky Blinders plays fast and loose with notions of religion and faith. Characters profess their Catholicism or Protestantism when it’s convenient for a plot line but never walk the walk beyond that. People are pious until they’re not, which may be the point, that sectarian affiliations are just another tribal marker, and that all “good Christians” are morally corruptible.

Back to the episode, Father McDoucheface dispatches Tommy to London. This serves two purposes; the first is to introduce us to down on his luck Russian aristocrat Grand Duke Leon Petrovich Romanov (Jan Bijvoet). I mean, this guy is so broke he can’t even get a warm egg for breakfast. He’s so down on his luck, he invites you out to lunch, and you gotta pick up the caviar bill, I mean what does a Grand Duke gotta do to get some respect around here? Hey-o! Pro tip; don’t look to Tommy Shelby for any sympathy. Also, don’t tell Leon he’s not really Russian unless you want to clean up broken glass.

The second purpose of Tommy’s trip to London is to leave a power vacuum up in Birmingham so his steakhead brothers to screw everything up. Tensions with the local Italian Changretta mob go from bad to hide in a coat rack and stab you in the face bad, when Johnny goes after Lizzie’s boyfriend Angel Changretta. Who is Lizzie? Lizzie is the prostitute that Tommy was shtupping in season 1 that Johnny was going to marry and then became Tommy’s secretary in season 2 and yadda yadda yadda…. Anyhow, at least it gave Johnny a chance to remind everyone the origins of the gang’s name by cutting Angel up with the razor stitched into the “peak” of his scally cap.

Tommy returns from the South and takes Johnny’s side in the dispute with the Changretta gang, which ultimately is just a set up for future events as we see Angel’s Father Vicente hire a hitman from Naples. Tommy orders the Peaky Blinders to come down hard on the Italians and it doesn’t sit well with Arthur, whose new Church-going wife Linda wants him to spend more nights at home. After firebombing the Changretta’s pub and beating on its patrons, Arthur washes the blood off his hands as if he’s washing away his sins, but we all know that’s an exercise in futility. He has done bad things in his past and will of course do bad things again in the future.

Arthur’s troubles tie into one of the emerging themes of season 3; the conflict between being a gangster and going legit. It’s an idea that’s been explored in everything from The Godfather to The Sopranos. Past seasons of Peaky Blinders portrayed The Shelbys as unrepentant outcasts, forever outside the English mainstream due to religious, class and ethnic differences. Season 3 sees them financially enabled to chase their dreams of the straight life. Tommy is trying to set up a charity and businesses overseas. Arthur wants to be a churchgoing Christian for his wife. It’s a very American idea, that money can bring you legitimacy and respectability, no matter how far down the socio-economic ladder you come from. It’s contrasted though by Aunt Polly’s son Michael Gray, the family’s straight man and accountant, who yearns for the power and deference his gangster cousin’s command.

This dichotomy sets the scene for the episode’s conclusion, at the Shelby Charity Foundation Dinner. All the major players are present including Father Hughes and Patrick Jarvis from The Economic League – whom Tommy is none to thrilled to see –  and Duke Leon’s niece Tatiana Petrovna, who we noted last recap was way too hot not to be seen again. She tells Tommy the sapphire he gave Grace, which was a down payment from the Russians in exchange for the arms, is actually cursed, and if you know anything about the Irish, or Gypsys, and especially Irish Gypsys, they tend to be superstitious and take things like curses pretty seriously. And Tommy should since…SPOILER ALERT…moments later a Changretta assasin jumps out and shoots at Mr. and Mrs. Shelby and guess who catches a slug right in the (how symbolic) heart? If you guessed the guy who the entire series centers on, you’d be wrong.

[Watch Peaky Blinders on Netflix]

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician who thinks The Damned were better than The Clash, and that Barry’s Irish Breakfast Tea is better than PG Tips. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.