Lifestyle
Six seasons and a sequel: ‘Peaky Blinders’ is easy to consume and impossible to forget
Cillian Murphy returns as gangster Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man.
Robert Viglasky Photography/Netflix
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Robert Viglasky Photography/Netflix
During his decade on the BBC period drama Peaky Blinders, Cillian Murphy matured visibly as a man, and also as an actor. Steven Knight wrote such a challenging and nuanced role for him, as gangster Tommy Shelby, that it wasn’t surprising at all that, when the series concluded, Murphy was tapped to star as J. Robert Oppenheimer by Christopher Nolan.
It also wasn’t surprising, if you’d devoured all six seasons of Peaky Blinders, that Murphy would be not only willing, but eager, to revisit the character of Tommy in a movie-length sequel. Especially when the script is written by series creator Steven Knight, and brings the story to a dramatic conclusion.
The drama in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is provided by both personal and historical challenges. We last saw Tommy, in the final episode of Peaky Blinders, in the 1930s. Prohibition had been repealed in the U.S., the Nazi Party was rising in Germany, and Tommy’s volatile brother, Arthur, was about to die.

The movie jumps ahead to November 1940, when England already is at war with Germany. A munitions factory staffed by women in Birmingham, Tommy’s hometown, is bombed by aerial strikes from the Nazis, and claims more than 100 victims.
Tommy has long since secluded himself far away, isolated in a remote farmhouse, haunted by wartime memories and what he fears are family ghosts. But the bombing brings a visit from his sister Ada (Sophie Rundle). She informs him not only of the devastation to Birmingham, but the fact that his estranged son has taken control of his old gang, the Peaky Blinders, and is making new and dangerous moves and alliances.
Tommy would prefer to stay distant, and uninvolved. But the recklessness of his son Duke (Barry Keoghan) leaves him little choice. Duke meets with Beckett (Tim Roth), a British Nazi sympathizer who finds in Duke an important and agreeable collaborator.
Soon Tommy finds himself having to take sides and do battle — either defending or betraying his own country, and either saving or opposing his own son. The stakes couldn’t be much higher — or, in writer Knight’s hands, more unpredictable or gripping.
Knight always populates his dramas with terrific actors and vibrant characters, and in The Immortal Man we get delightful return visits from, among others, Peaky Blinders series players Rebecca Ferguson, Stephen Graham and Packy Lee.
And most of all, we get Knight’s brilliant approach to his period dramas, the way he folds the fictional and the factual. He’s done it so well, so many times, for so many outstanding TV series, and I’ve given rave reviews to most of them, including A Thousand Blows, The Veil, House of Guinness and All the Light We Cannot See.
Some of Knight’s shows eluded me at the time, but I’ve since caught up with and been delighted by them. Like Taboo, from 2017, which featured great early performances by both Tom Hardy and Jessie Buckley, who just won a best actress Oscar for Hamnet.
You can watch The Immortal Man all by itself, but if you’re uninitiated in what’s come before, you shouldn’t. All six seasons of Peaky Blinders are available on Netflix, and there are only six episodes per season — so even if you start from the beginning, you’ll get to this new movie sequel before you know it. Like any good Knight drama — and they’re all good — Peaky Blinders is addictive, easy to consume, and impossible to forget.
Lifestyle
Bill Maher is getting the Mark Twain Prize after all
Satirist Bill Maher is this year’s recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. Maher will receive the award at the Kennedy Center on June 28th. The show will stream on Netflix at a later date.
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Bill Maher will be receiving the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor after all.
There’s been some confusion about whether the comedian and longtime host of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher would, indeed, be getting the top humor award. After The Atlantic cited anonymous sources saying he was, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called it “fake news.” But today the Kennedy Center made it official.
“For nearly three decades, the Mark Twain Prize has celebrated some of the greatest minds in comedy,” said Roma Daravi, the Kennedy Center’s vice president of public relations in a statement. “For even longer, Bill has been influencing American discourse – one politically incorrect joke at a time.”
Is President Trump, chair of the Kennedy Center’s board, in on the joke?
Maher once visited Trump at the White House and he tends to be more conservative than many of his comedian peers but after their dinner Trump soured on Maher, calling him a “highly overrated LIGHTWEIGHT” on social media.
Maher’s acerbic wit has targeted both political parties and he’s been particularly hard on Trump recently, criticizing his decisions to wage a war with Iran and his personnel choices.
“Trump said, ‘when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.’ Um, who’s ‘we?,’” Maher said in a recent monologue.
Past recipients of the Mark Twain Prize include Conan O’Brien, Dave Chappelle, Jon Stewart, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tina Fey, Eddie Murphy and Carol Burnett.
In a statement released through the Kennedy Center, Maher said, “It is indeed humbling to get anything named for a man who’s been thrown out of as many school libraries as Mark Twain.”
Maher will receive the Mark Twain Prize at the Kennedy Center on June 28. The show will stream on Netflix at a later date.
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Lifestyle
Suit asks court to force Trump administration to use ‘The Kennedy Center’ name
Workers react to the media after updating signage outside the Kennedy Center on Dec. 19, 2025, in Washington, D.C.
Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
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Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio is asking a federal court in Washington, D.C., to force President Trump and the board and staff of the Kennedy Center to revert to calling the arts complex The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
The motion, which Beatty filed on Wednesday, asks a federal circuit court judge to reverse the Trump administration and the center’s current board and staff’s decision to call the complex “The Trump-Kennedy Center.”
In the filing, Beatty’s attorneys wrote: “Can the Board of the Kennedy Center — in direct contradiction of the governing statutes — rename this sacred memorial to John F. Kennedy after President Donald J. Trump? The answer is, unequivocally, ‘no.’ By renaming the Center — in violation of the law — Defendants have breached the terms of the trust and their most basic fiduciary obligations as trustees. Shortly after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Congress designated the Kennedy Center as the ‘sole national memorial to the late’ President in the nation’s capital.”

In a statement emailed to NPR Thursday, Roma Daravi, the vice president of public relations for the Kennedy Center, wrote: “We’re confident the court will uphold the board’s decision on the name change and the desperately needed renovations which will continue as scheduled.” NPR also reached out to the White House for comment, but did not receive a reply.
In December, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that the complex would heretofore be called “The Trump-Kennedy Center.” Although the new moniker was never approved by Congress, the Center’s website and publicity materials were immediately updated to reflect the administration’s chosen name, and the same day as Leavitt’s announcement, Trump’s name went up on the signage of the complex’s exterior, over that of the slain President Kennedy.
Later that month, Rep. Beatty who serves as an ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees, sued Trump, members of the Kennedy Center board appointed by Trump, and some ex-officio members, arguing that the complex’s name had been legislated by Congress in 1964. Wednesday’s motion is part of that lawsuit.

In a press release sent to NPR on Wednesday, Rep. Beatty said: “Donald Trump’s attempt to rename the Kennedy Center after himself is not just an act of ego. It is an attempt to subvert our Constitution and the rule of law. Congress established the Kennedy Center by law, and only Congress can change its name.”
For many patrons, artists and benefactors of the Kennedy Center, the name change was the last straw in politicizing the performing arts hub. Following the White House announcement of the new name, many prominent artists withdrew planned performances there, including the composer Philip Glass (a Kennedy Center Honors award recipient, who received his prize during the first Trump administration), the famed Broadway composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz and the 18-time Grammy-winning banjo master Béla Fleck.
The Washington National Opera (WNO), which had been in residence at the Kennedy Center since 1971, also severed its ties in January after ticket sales dropped precipitously. Earlier this month, WNO artistic director Francesca Zambello told NPR, “We did try as best as we could to encourage [the patrons] that we are a bipartisan organization, but people really voted with their feet and with their pocketbooks. And so we realized that there was really no choice for us.”

On Monday, a coalition of eight architecture and cultural groups also sued Trump and the Kennedy Center board in federal court over the complex’s scheduled closing in July for unspecified renovations. Their suit seeks to have the White House and board members comply with existing historic preservation laws, and to secure Congressional approval before moving ahead with the renovation plans.
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