Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight on how nationalist season 5 plot line resonates today: ‘Not just similar but the same, it’s chilling’

The new series is set amid the rise of populism in the 1920s and sees Sam Claflin join the cast as fascist leader Oswald Mosley

Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight has spoken about the ‘chilling’ resonance of season five’s themes of nationalism, populism, fascism and racism.

The writer was speaking at the London premiere of the show’s fifth season, which is set in the late 1920s and sees Cillian Murphy’s Tommy Shelby enter the realm of politics and go head to head with Oswald Mosley (Sam Claflin), who later became the leader of the British Union of Fascists.

“There’s the rise of nationalism, populism, fascism and racism,” said Knight, “the huge sweep across the world, and you look at the world now and what I hope people might take from this is what was the consequence of when it happened last time?

“Nine years later there was a war. That’s what happened before and there was this real movement of, ‘We must protect ourselves, foreigners are the enemy.’”

He added: “People will find it staggering that the language, the phrases, the sentences used at the time are not just similar [to now] but the same, it’s chilling.”

Peaky Blinders season five will air on BBC1 later this year.