A Man Without Limitations

A Character Analysis: Thomas Shelby

Now that the incredible BBC/Netflix series Peaky Blinders has come to a close I’ve decided to put together a rather thorough character analysis of the infamous Thomas Shelby OBE, which I will be referring to as Tommy from here on out. From the start of season one, I have been in love with this series and the character of Tommy Shelby for a number of reasons. The series did a marvelous job of keeping viewers hooked season after season and while the story focused heavily on Tommy and his constant drive for success we were still able to see and understand a number of different characters throughout the six season series. But let’s be honest the best part of Peaky Blinders was hands down the main character: Tommy Shelby. Actor Cillian Murphy was the perfect pick and he did an amazing job playing him: he’s suave, cunning, sophisticated and brutally cold. Honestly, he is one of the smartest characters I’ve ever seen written for television. Now let’s take a deeper look at what made Tommy such a brilliant and compelling character.

Right from the beginning with the first sequence and introduction to Tommy we are shown a low angle shot looking up at him which immediately indicates power and authority and we can feel his dark undertone. I can also note that every subsequent season premiere when we are reintroduced to Tommy we are shown him from a low angle to continue to reinforce the audience’s view on him as an authoritative figure. Back at the very first introduction we see him as sharply dressed and greeted by everyone he passes, constantly maintaining a menacing stillness to his physicality. What amazes me with Tommy’s character, is that the moment he’s on screen, his presence is instantly felt. You can just feel the weight of his character. Tommy’s nature also has a distinct coldness to it. He is very collected which often gives him the higher statues, or power, in nearly every scene. There is no remorse to his actions: if something needs to be done, it’ll be done. Tommy is always in control, even when he seems he’s not, he’s manipulative and a clever problem solver.

There are many different ways of describing Tommy like cold yet loyal, clever, manipulative to being a problem solver but the most apparent is that he is a man without limitations. The war is an ever-present theme in the series, particularly in season one, and we see how all these young men have been left altered by their experiences. Here, the series suggests it is the echo of the war driving the violent code these men live by. Having come so close to death himself, Tommy feels he is now living on borrowed extra time. This allows him a fearlessness, he has faced death once before and so anything else is minor. A man who isn’t afraid to die is capable of the unimaginable and this builds onto the idea of him being a man without limitations. In contrast to the limitlessness, the constant swigging of whiskey and use of drugs shows the troubled mind Tommy actually has, it reveals a weakness to his character. When he wakes after envisioning the war after a drug intake, he appears vulnerable for the first time. I think this is a key scene in opening him up to the audience because we are drawn to someone who is in control and has power, but it is this hidden need for help that warms our hearts to Tommy.

It has been stated that Tommy is the classic anti-hero, there are these types of moments throughout the series that show us a human, a man suffering and the experiences he had in France were just the beginning – from season 1 to 6 we see him suffer a number of losses and traumas. Through Grace (Annabelle Wallis), we get an insight into who Tommy may have been before France. There is a softness and vulnerability to him when he talks of their life together. This dream of a pure future: of family and a legitimate business enterprise, allows the audience to see a Tommy that could be saved, and perhaps to put themselves in the place of someone who could save him. By the end of season 1, we can see the softness he had turned hard and he believes he was blinded by love and his desire to be an honest man slightly diminished. This is a turning point for Tommy, his ambition is clear, making money is one thing but he aspires to continue striving for power until he finds a man that he cannot defeat.

Strategy, Chaos and Ambition

Tommy’s ambition is almost unending. Throughout the series he and his empire grow to levels of power and luxury beyond which most people can dream off. And he does that by outwitting his enemies, always having a clear plan on how things will progress often thinking multiple steps ahead and manipulating his friends, family and enemies into doing what he wants. For a man like Tommy his ambition is not there to reach any particular goal anymore, he has no retirement plans so to speak. Rather his ambition acts as form of distraction, like drugs to an addict that in turn helps him in distracting himself from his own personal demons. As Tommy himself put it, he’ll keep playing the game till he can find a man he can’t defeat and with Oswald Mosley (Sam Claflin) telling Tommy ‘forbidding is forbidden to us. There are no limits’ he truly believes he is unstoppable and boundless. While his goals of success and power are for the family, it is clear Tommy is motivated by self-interest: anything that benefits the family benefits him. Although we constantly see his questionable morals through his smoking, willingness to fight (or kill) and hiring of prostitutes, he does live by his own moral code. To that end, Tommy is as loyal as they come or at least as loyal as he allows himself to be. His strongest and potentially weakest trait is his loyalty.

By season 5 we start to see his weaknesses come to light and shine through more so than they had in previous seasons and his drive and ambition may have hit a point he is unable to turn around from. At the beginning of episode 6 in season 5, Tommy is talking with Churchill (Neil Maskell) and Churchill asks him ‘do you tend your own garden, Mr. Shelby’ and Tommy replies with ‘no. I have a gardener. Actually I have 3 and those men with no ambition are happier than I will ever be.’ This is a pivotal moment for the character of Tommy Shelby in which he openly admits that despite his ego having no limits, he is hopeless. His shift towards trying to be a better person, a more upstanding citizen turns on him at the end of season 5 and he thinks he should return to his old ways of living with the shootings, the cuttings and the killings. We saw a glimpse at this fate by the end of the previous season when he attempted to live the mundane average life of an aristocrat by playing golf and fishing, his mind started slipping back into the war. He realizes his fate is to dance with the devil and continues with his obsession for power and chaos.

At the start of season 6, we hear a voiceover of Michael (Finn Cole) stating that ‘this man with his strategies and ambitions’ is the reason his mother Polly Gray (Helen McCrory) is dead and he will avenge her. This really sets up the sixth and final season by indicating that Tommy may well have met his match – as Michael understands that he is driven solely by his limitless drive for success. Michael knows how he works and the only way to beat him is to play the game and come up with a better ‘smarter’ strategy. Strategy, chaos and ambition play a key role in the sixth season and we start to see a potential inevitable end for Tommy. There is a point throughout this season in particular where we can see he has truly become a man without hope, but he is a man with a strategy. This will be his legacy or more importantly this is how he knows he will be remembered.

A Man Without Hope, But A Man With A Strategy

There are several times throughout the series where we can see that despite all the planning, manipulating and winning Tommy is truly a man without hope. While he may have the strategy to get ahead and continue to gain the power, he does not see the value in it. In season 3, we really start to see how the success and power weighs on him. In particular when Duchess Tatiana (Gaite Jansen) begins acting a fool in his house and starts to call Tommy out for being unfamiliar with his new found success and that he still acts as a boy in a house he has broken into. He starts to understand what she means but what she doesn’t understand, given her particular position is that no matter how successful you become people will see you for what you are and where you came from. He realizes this at the end of season 3. We as humans have ambition and a drive for success, some more than others. I can, at times, relate to Tommy and his drive to keep moving up and wanting more. While we are from different times and different circumstances, I did not have an easy life growing up and always wanted a better life for myself than I had. But there is a part of me that sees how hard it is to change where you come from and the perception of life you have from how you grew up. People will always see you for what you were rather than who you become. In season 4, episode 4 Tommy says ‘I am an extreme example of what a working class man can achieve’ and it is true – we can see what he is able to achieve without limitations. But season 5 and 6 show us that while he can dress, act and play the part of an extremely powerful and successful man there are people who will continue to only see him as a gangster gypsy and nothing more. In the end, Tommy uses this to his advantage and ultimately, once again, outsmarts his enemies. It is not until the very end, when we finally see the change in Tommy now that he has beat death again. The ending of the series left me thinking that while Tommy may still continue with his unrelenting drive for success – he is back at the beginning of his journey. He is just a man living on borrowed extra time.

In conclusion, I want to highlight how the writers of Peaky Blinders have done such a beautiful job creating depth and complexity in each character, not just Tommy. The series at its core is a story of what happens to a family as they try to expand their empire and ascend into a position of power and gain success. But in Tommy Shelby, we see a character who’s brilliant but not without great flaw. In Tommy, we get character that demonstrates the conflict between ambition and loyalty. Both necessary, but both constantly opposing each other and this is the essential underlying theme of Peaky Blinders. In Tommy’s past, he realizes that loyalty to his country required sacrificing all his ambitions (money, love, etc.) but now his ambition requires a sacrifice of all loyalty to his country, his friends and even his family. In the end, we are shown a man driven by ambition but he is truly a man without limitations.