6 of the best podcasts for Peaky Blinders fans

Peaky Blinders is back for its final season, and between Tommy Shelby’s quests to stop Oswald Mosley’s fascists, stay in Winston Churchill’s good books, fend off a challenge to his authority from his long-lost little brother, stop his brother Arthur going off the deep end again and save his marriage, there are a lot of plates spinning.

So, it’d be understandable if you need a little recap – and there are a lot of podcasts ready to help.

Know all there is to know about the Shelby gang? There are behind the scenes stories aplenty here too, from actors, directors and showrunner Steven Knight, and historians telling the true stories behind the series too.

Of course, the end of Peaky Blinders as we know it isn’t the end of the Shelby saga. There’s a film to come, and a potential spin-off too, so now’s the best time to find your favourite Peaky pod.

Obsessed with… Peaky Blinders

If you want behind the scenes stories, this is where to come. Ahead of season five, Digital Spy’s Laurence Mozafari sat down with pretty much everyone involved for this BBC podcast – Steven Knight, Cillian Murphy, director Anthony Byrne and loads besides – to explore how that season came together, as well as recapping everything that’s happened so far with the directors of seasons one to four. It’s as close as Peaky’s got to an official pod, so it’s very on-brand – but that also means the access is second to none. LISTEN NOW >> 

By Order of the Peaky Blinders

This is the best of the Peaky fan podcasts. Hosts Daniel and Josh break down every episode, leak, rumour and trailer – a thankless task at times over the barren couple of years since the end of season five – and interview fan favourites from the Peaky-verse including Johnny Dogs actor Packy Lee and Emmett J Scanlan. They’re well informed, passionate and lovingly critical. LISTEN NOW >>

Cillian Murphy’s Limited Edition

Two of the biggest draws of Peaky are the tunes and lovely Cillian Murphy. So, what more could a Peaky fan want than to luxuriate in both for a couple of hours? Murphy pieces together playlists for BBC 6Music show in his basement somewhere outside the Dublin suburbs and they’re eclectic in the extreme, ranging from funk and jazz to afrobeat and spoken word. But everything he plays has a nocturnal, owlish feel to it. LISTEN NOW>>

Previously On… Peaky Blinders

The Previously On… podcast runs through the back catalogue of a big series before pivoting to a week-by-week recap as its newest series lands. Most recently that’s included Succession and Westworld, and it dipped into peaky back in 2019 too. Annoyingly, that means it pulls up short at the end of season four but with the amount of double-, triple-, and quadruple-crossing that went down that season, it’s certainly the season most in need of a forensic analysis. LISTEN NOW >>

History Extra podcast: The Real Peaky Blinders

The Peaky-verse provides rich pickings for history podcasters. The Blinders themselves existed, and as the inspirations for the Shelby clan come from a real crime family called the Sheldons, quite a few podcasts have dived into the true story behind the show. Dan Snow’s History Hit did another good dive into the underworld of postwar Birmingham too, with historian and Peaky grandson Prof Carl Chinn. But our pick is History Extra’s chat with Prof Andrew Davies, who specialises in the history of crime. He digs into how late Victorian society created the conditions for organised crime to flourish, and how the gangs themselves were organised. LISTEN NOW >> 

Oh! What a Lovely Podcast: Peaky Blinders

Go on then – one more history pod. Emma Hanna from the University of Kent joins the team of Oh! What a Lovely Podcast, which examines the unexpected ways that the First World War has influenced pop culture and the ways in which pop culture has coloured how we’ve seen the conflict since. This one’s a little looser and more relaxed than History Extra, and focuses more on the ways that trauma and violence changed the men who fought in the First World War and thereby changed British society. LISTEN NOW >>