Are The Accents In Peaky Blinders Accurate? It’s Complicated

As a Brit, I’ve always been fascinated by the huge array of regional dialects packed into a relatively small space on our islands. Every country has different accents, of course, but it’s remarkable how an accent can change so dramatically in the U.K. over such short distances. Just listen to the difference between Scouse and Manc with only 35 miles separating Liverpool and Manchester. All our radically different accents provide fuel for endless banter, and everyone has their favorites and least favorites. Personally, I can listen to people from Newcastle, Yorkshire, and Wales talk all day, but I’m not a big fan of Essex (partly due to local rivalry as a Tractor Boy from Suffolk) and the Birmingham accent, or Brummie. 

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Which brings us to “Peaky Blinders,” the hugely popular BBC crime drama set in Birmingham in the early 20th century. That location makes the show something of an anomaly for British TV, because the nation’s second-largest city simply doesn’t provide the backdrop for all that many hit shows or movies. According to Birmingham-born Steven Knight (the show’s creator), it’s largely down to the accent. He told Birmingham Live in 2014:

“For some reason it’s a very difficult accent to get right, harder even than Geordie… It’s considered too difficult so we won’t do anything in Birmingham. There’s been a big black hole in the middle of the country as far as TV production goes.”

Aside from difficulty, the Brummie dialect is much-maligned in the U.K., often ranking towards the bottom of polls of British accents. It isn’t always well-represented by celebrities who hail from the area. You can still hear it when Ozzy Osbourne speaks and it pops out occasionally when Julie Walters is on a roll, but Felicity Jones or David Harewood? Not so much. In general, it’s been left to comedians like Frank Skinner and Jasper Carrott to keep the Brummie flag flying on TV. In this respect, it maybe shouldn’t come as a surprise that none of the principal cast of “Peaky Blinders” are from the West Midlands, but how accurate are their attempts to mimic the city’s very specific accent?

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Everybody likes to hear their accent done well. There aren’t many TV shows or movies set in my neck of the woods either, so I was very keen to see how Ralph Fiennes fared as a good old Suffolk boy in “The Dig,” the interesting true story of the Sutton Hoo treasure. He spent time with a language coach and visited Suffolk pubs to get an ear for it, and he generally did a good job. Cillian Murphy, originally from Cork in Ireland, went to similar lengths to master the Brummie accent in “Peaky Blinders.” He told the Independent:

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“I hung out with Steve [Knight], and we went to the actual Garrison pub in Birmingham with his Brummie mates… And we’re just drinking Guinness there, and they’re singing Birmingham City songs and telling all sorts of stories, and I was recording on my iPhone, and then I took that home, and used it to try and track the accents.”

Not everybody was completely convinced by the efforts of Murphy and his fellow cast members. The Guardian called the accents “dodgy.” James Delingpole of The Spectator wrote: “Some [actors] sound like a melange of Liverpool and generic northern.” Birmingham native Lauren O’Reilly of Vice also claimed the show’s accents sound more Scouse than Brummie, but that repeated criticism largely misses the point of what Steven Knight was trying to achieve. He detailed how certain characters bring in traces of other dialects depending on where they have spent time, citing Billy Kimber’s touch of Cockney and Aunt Polly’s trace of Liverpudlian.

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But not everyone is negative about the accents in “Peaky Blinders.” Lucy Townsend of the BBC, another Brummie local, wrote of her relief:

“As Cillian Murphy dropped his soft Irish lilt for Tommy Shelby’s understated Brummie, he demonstrated that the accent could be serious, subtle and spoken by sharp-minded people.”

Laura of Smashing English gives a detailed analysis of the pronunciation in the show and comes down on the side of it being generally okay. She also notes, quite reasonably, that casting native Brummies would have deprived the show of great actors, like the now-Oscar-winning Murphy.

While a great accent can certainly provide a welcome touch of authenticity, a bad one can risk breaking the spell altogether. British and Irish movie buffs can be especially unforgiving when it comes to actors butchering their regional dialects. The Irish Times poured scorn on Tommy Lee Jones and Jeff Bridges’ accents in “Blown Away,” and Dick Van Dyke has long been singled out as a figure of fun for his Cockney stylings in “Mary Poppins.” As a British non-Brummie native, the accents in “Peaky Blinders” sound decent enough to me, and we should perhaps acknowledge that there is a genuine attempt to nail it from all involved. Steven Knight, who grew up in the same part of the city as the Shelbys, has gone on to say (per Birmingham Live):

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“I feel the pain of people who criticize the accent, as for years I’ve had to hear Brummie accents done badly on the telly. But you can’t not do it because of that … we gave it a go and I would defend the methods used by the actors. Performance comes first. There’s nothing worse than restricting an actor because they’re thinking too much about getting an accent right.”

Ultimately, the accuracy of the accents has done absolutely nothing to dent the popularity and critical success of “Peaky Blinders,” and nor should it. Despite a few quibbles from the locals, it seems that Brummies have fully embraced the show; Knight claims that the audience share in the West Midlands area was double that of any other region in Britain. Not only that, the huge success worldwide has had a massive impact on Birmingham’s tourism with a record-breaking 42.8 million visitors flocking to the city in 2018. The upcoming “Peaky Blinders” movie starring Cillian Murphy and the possibility of season 7 still happening will no doubt ensure that we remain locked into the exploits of Tommy and the gang for the foreseeable future. Who knows? With such success, the Birmingham accent might even start creeping up the rankings of British dialects.

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