Hello and welcome to my easy to understand guide to Peaky Blinders and audiences. This video is going to be particularly relevant for you if you are studying the EDUCAS A-Level Media Studies specification as Peaky Blinders appears on that spec from 2024 exams onwards. Audiences can find Peaky Blinders very entertaining, obviously being part of the crime genre. A lot of people enjoy this idea of gangsters, you know, and there's quite a lot of violence within the show as well.
So, There's a lot of visual spectacle, you know, period costumes, period settings etc. And a lot of audiences really enjoy that now, particularly with the growing popularity of other programmes like Downton Abbey. However, a lot of audiences found it more entertaining than things like Downton Abbey because it was less sanitised, it was more violent, it was more dark. And so a lot of people quite like that. Some audiences might find the show quite informative or educational because it's based in a kind of historical time period.
You know, they're finding out about crime. The show is based on a kind of real gang called the Peaky Blinders. And so the semi-biographical nature of the show is going to appeal to several audiences who quite like that kind of historical narrative.
The show also offers quite a lot of information, education and relatability to do with working classes in regional areas of Britain that a lot of educated audiences are going to particularly enjoy. and particularly be able to understand. Ofcom is the organisation that regulates the BBC, and in 2018 they carried out some research to find out what audiences felt about the BBC and the content they produced, and they found that many audiences actually felt that the BBC didn't do enough to represent different regional areas of Britain, and so this might explain why the BBC tried to respond positively to this by encouraging more content like things like Peaky Blinders.
Because the show makes quite a lot of social comments about class and wealth and poverty, a lot of audiences quite enjoy this, particularly if they're kind of left-leaning politically. They're going to quite enjoy the messages put forward by the creators of the show. The old-fashioned setting, costumes, ideas, ideologies, Also offers a certain amount of escapism for audiences. Some audiences quite, I like that idea of like nostalgia and tradition and going back to a time when the world operated differently.
The show offers quite typically masculine heroes where, you know, they're involved in violence, they're quite aggressive, quite strong physically, mentally and emotionally. And it also offers... quite counter-typical feminist representations where the female characters are quite tough and quite powerful and quite strong. So those characters are going to appeal to audiences for different reasons.
Some people are going to quite like the typical representations of masculinity and some audiences are going to quite like the counter-typical representations of femininity and female characters. Being that it's a BBC drama that gives it a certain air of quality and a lot of audiences will be drawn to it. because it's a BBC drama and they're expecting a certain level of quality from that.
Not all audiences are going to respond the same way and take the preferred reading. Some audiences are going to take a more negotiated or oppositional reading. For example, some audiences found the show too violent, too graphic.
Some audiences found that the show, despite purporting to be based on a historically accurate gang, lacked factual accuracy. You know, some of the things that they did, the time period it was set in, the gang actually operated more in the 1800s, whereas the TV show shows them operating more in the early 1900s. And they use music that doesn't fit in with that time period at all.
So they use a lot of like modern kind of punk rock music. And so some audiences didn't respond well to this as they felt that it wasn't kind of historically accurate enough. Some audiences felt that the accents that the actors used in the show. were not accurate and they felt that the accents grated on them quite a lot. It had a big impact on fans, there was a big rise in tourism in the areas featured in the programme.
The fashion from the show became really popular, there was a big rise in this kind of style that you see on some of the male characters and in the marketing materials, the posters etc. And certainly within the local areas where the show was set and filmed. People encountered a lot of audiences who were fans, like in costume, in cosplay, turning up to themed events and things.
There was even a Peaky Blinders festival in Digbeth where 20,000 people turned up. And so there is definitely a big fan base for this show where people want to come together and celebrate with other people from that fandom. Active audiences were given lots of opportunity to check out behind the scenes content online.
and get involved on social media. There were even opportunities for audiences to get involved in real life, going to see interactive, immersive experiences based on the show. Online there's also a huge amount of fan fiction, fan art that's also been created by audiences for the show.
And the BBC actively encouraged this, holding competitions for fans to submit artwork that they would later use within the marketing campaign, making audiences feel really involved. Streaming the show on things like Netflix and Prime has also helped to attract more modern audiences who are less inclined to want scheduled programming and they're very much more focused on streaming now. The celebrity cast was a real draw for the programme.
Lots of famous people within that cast helped to engage fans of their previous work. So for example, Cillian Murphy, Sam Neill, Tom Hardy, etc. So that was my easy to understand guide to Peaky Blinders.
audiences. Don't forget to check out my channel for other videos that are going to be relevant for you and if you have a video that you would like that I don't already have, leave a little comment below and I'll see what I can do.