THE FUSE

About midway through “Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man,” venerable gentleman thug Tommy Shelby enters a pub and faces off against some young, dumb tough with the temerity not to know who he is. Shelby wins the argument in rather emphatic fashion: stuffing a hand grenade down the poor guy’s shirt and kicking him out of the establishment, seconds before he’s blown to smithereens off-screen. As punishments go, it rather dwarfs the crime, but it met with cheers and hoots of approval at the screening this critic attended. Heroism has always had a sadistic streak in Steven Knight’s beloved gangland drama, and as Shelby, Cillian Murphy has always found just the right temperature to keep audiences on side: He’s a psycho, sure, but one with a soul.