To think I should be able to watch a show on the BBC on a Sunday night?

[TinklyLittleLaugh]

I love Peaky Blinders I really do and I love Arthur. But last night I had to actually get up and leave the room when he was battering the Quaker guy.

It’s an exciting, stylish show; is there any actual need for it to be so gratuitously violent? Am I some kind of snowflake? Surely a skilled director can create an atmosphere of violence and fear without being so graphic?

Of course it’s not the only show like this. I just think we are all getting desensitised to this sort of nasty stuff. There’s no need for it. Who actually enjoys it?

Of course there's loads of other stuff to watch and of course I can (and will) spend that hour doing something else. But I was looking forward to this series and I think it says something that having enjoyed the first four series, I'm finding this series unwatchable. I haven't changed my outlook. I'm guessing the OP hasn't changed hers either. The programme has changed. For the worse.

But I don’t want to watch pap like Bake Off or Love Island. I want to watch stylish exciting stuff like Peaky or GOT or SOA.

I just don’t see why it all has to be so explicitly violent. There is no need for it to be so violent. Who is enjoying it being so violent?

Didn't bother me in the slightest, it was exactly what I would expect from Arthur.

The boiling tar was worse surely?

The whole show is violent, they are the peaky blinders because they blind people with razor blades.

Clue is in the name.

It’s ok to say you love the show but it’s too violent but I am slightly if you want the kudos of a ‘stylish’ Sunday night show on after 9pm but would rather it was about 2 women from Birmingham who run a dress shop? 😂

I am not enjoying the violence. It is part of the show and the premise and it isn’t actually real. It is acting 😂

I think I am not as Squamish perhaps about actors doing a fight scene or a realistic but not real violent scene. I know it isn’t real. I wouldn’t want to watch it in real life happen, but it isn’t real. It is CGI, sound effects, acting and fake blood

Squeamish in fact

The music is integral to PB; Authur's speech about his devilish hands comes from a Nick Cave song.

I don’t watch Peaky Blinders, partly because I knew it Owl,d be very violent, but I agree with you OP, and I often found the violence in GOT, especially against women, pretty vile. There’s simply no need for a good story to actually have to show this kind of violence.

There will be a generation growing up with this TV utterly immune to it.

Yes the music, the swagger, the characters. In my opinion it does not need the violence to be so explicit for it to be a great show.

When did TV start being like this; five years ago, ten? It’s kind of crept up and suddenly it’s every decent show.

I don’t think the “ what did you expect “ posters are being fair to you OP. You are not saying you are surprised at the violence, just how graphically it’s portrayed. I love PB but I said to DH “ This is too much” and had to look away. So many ways to convey a violent scene without showing it like that.

Quite. Pinkie Brown in Brighton Rock, Bill Sikes in Oliver! are both enormously psychotic individuals and yet their very real menance is not graphically shown. Can you imagine what the murder of Nancy would be like in a drama made in 2019? And yet, despite it being a musical, for kids, the sense of violence and menace as portrayed by Oliver Reed is unmistakable. Pinkie in Brighton Rock is a really frightening character as well.

I simply think you can avoid violence if you want to; I usually do with the exception of peaky blinders. Clearly you think I watch ‘pap’ but there are whole non violent genres, no one is forced to watch it if they do not want to. But the genre you are speaking of is that of dark adult drama. There will very likely be sex and violence in a dark adult drama.

Oliver is a PG film. There wasn’t ever going to be lifelike violence in it, menacing overtones is all that is allowed

The entire premise of GOT is that it is literally a fight to the death between rival factions. Again I do not know how you would create content along those lines without some violent content, because it would not be dark and thrilling enough for audiences. It would be a lot of politics and chit chat

There is a line between what is very mainstream, PG, 16 and what is 18 and adult content. What you are saying is that there are too many 18 rated TV shows being made and you would rather they were more like 15’s. Why has this happened in society? It is because people are pushing the creative boundaries and this is one way of doing so. To shock people is one way of gaining a following and there is sometimes some truth in what you see. People are violent in real life, and violence is power. The Shelby family like GOT is all about power

I have watched many very upsetting films, the main 2 being Dunkirk and Schindler’s List. They were upsetting and hard to watch because it really happened and it was realistic

Hands down the best, most gripping, most adult show I have watched is The Wire. It is violent but not graphically, gratuitously so.

Recently watched The Last Kingdom. That’s an exciting, often violent show, but the violence is not glorified and almost pornified, not lingered over lovingly, like it is in Peaky.

I agree, there's no need for the level of gory detail that's in fairly mainstream shows, on mainstream channels. This isn't a late night horror.

The Tudors (10 years ago?) was the same, loved the show and I get that there were some nasty things going on, but it was so graphic at times.

It's possible to have violent content without going into all the ghastly minutiae. And it's definitely possible to like a gritty series, the characters and plots, but not want all the screams of agony, close ups, prolonged grimness.

I think there is a point to the violence being ramped up (although it has always been violent) it's part of the storyline in that everything seems to be spinning out of control. They have been drinking more and taking more drugs to go alongside this.

Pookie but that’s my exact point - Oliver is a PG and yet in Bill Sikes they have a truly menacing character without sowing anything graphic.

it can be done. Or rather, it could but now modern audiences have become immune to that kind of subtlety. Of course you could have done GoT without that much violence - but younger viewers would, as you say, not be gripped. But the big blockbuster shows of the past managed it.

But people aren’t saying no violence, just that it can be conveyed in so many different ways other than watching someone kick someone’s head in.

@smileylottie87

I think that’s how I see it. The glory days are over it’s now just survival of the nastiest bastard