2. How has your chosen
Media text attracted its
audience?
How has an audience
responded to your
chosen media text?
The ļ¬rst thing you
must deļ¬ne is context
and audience.
3. Context/Intro
Set in Birmingham in
1919, Steven Knights
Peaky Blinders is a
crime drama which
follows former world
war one soldiers who
have returned home
and formed a criminal
gang.
4. Placement/Target audience.
Peaky Blinders was aired on
BBC Two. BBC Two's remit
historically was screening
programmes targeting the arts,
culture, drama and some
comedy. Texts should be
appealing to audiences not
already served by BBC1 or
ITV. Over its ļ¬rst thirty or so
years the channel developed a
reputation for screening highly
praised and prestigious āHigh
Browā drama series.
This successful
placement has helped
attract its intended
target audience.
5. A highbrow text is
intellectually and
culturally rich.
Peaky Blinders has
elements of a
highbrow text but also
contains various
mainstream
conventions.
Incidentally a criticism
of BBC 2.
6. Peaky Blinders has been complemented for its high
production value and cinematography. A gratiļ¬cation
of an active audience.
8. Boardwalk Empire VS Peaky Blinders?
A negotiated audience enjoyed the text but thought it lacked
originality and often seemed to mirror some of the key
narrative themes of Board Walk Empire, a American text set
in the same era. The text was also accused of sacriļ¬cing its
artistic merit and realism for mainstream convention. Others
thought its failure to meet the heights of Boardwalk were down
to budget.
9. Audience Response
The points of comparison between Peaky
Blinders and HBO's Boardwalk Empire
are conspicuous. Both are set immediately
after the ļ¬rst world war in a gangland in
which the future is up for grabs; and both
feature a returning soldier shattered and
embittered by his war experiences.
"Tommy is one of those men who came
back from this war horriļ¬cally damaged,
who were spat back into society without
any counselling," says Murphy. "And, of
course, a lot of them brought their
weapons home with them. There were a
lot of guns around at the time. Tommy has
a huge disdain for authority
In the end, Peaky Blinders ļ¬attered to
deceive. Ultimately, it only served to
prove that, when it comes to truly
great shows, British TV still canāt
match American television.
Partly, this is down to scope and
budget.
10. Audience Response ā Underdeveloped?
A oppositional response to
the text was that it was all
style no substance. Again
some critics put this down
to budget. Most highbrow
TV series have 12 episodes
per season. With Peaky
Blinders only including 6,
Jim Shelly, the Daily Mail
critic, felt the series was
rushed with characters and
plots often under
developed and lacking
complexity.
11. Attracting an audience. Audience response.
One way Peaky Blinders
attracted an audience and thus
gained a positive audience
response was via breaking the
stereotypical representation of
regional identity, in this case the
Brummie.
A study was conducted in
2008 where people were asked
to grade the intelligence of a
person based on their accent
and the Brummie accent was
ranked as the least intelligent
accent.
