How Does Peaky Blinders Target its Intended Audience?

Set in Birmingham in 1919, Steven Knights', Peaky Blinders is a crime drama while follows former WW1 soldiers who have returned home and formed a criminal gang. The text is aired on BBC 2 at 9pm and is a highbrow text that only made six one-hour episodes.

The text is dominated by the almost constant use of non-diegetic sound. The text conforms to features of a mainstream text by using a soundtrack to reflect a character's emotions; this shows evidence of targeting a more passive audience and they will have to do less decoding of the character's emotions. The text uses the upbeat and rocky soundtrack by the White Stripes when the Shelby brothers are working with the racing books and money and this reflects the excitement and chaotic nature of the scene. However, this then contrasts to the somber soundtrack when Aunt Polly wants to speak to Tommy. This highlights to the audience that there is something wrong and adds a worrying tone, which allows the audience to be more passive.

The text helps the audience to gain the uses and gratifications of learning and self-education gaining through the incorporation of historical and cultural context. This is shown when Tommy Shelby explains to the newspaper reporter the reasons for burning the pictures of the King as being due to them not wanting the King to see what happens to their city after how they fought for him in WW1. This targets a more active and perhaps niche audience as this provides additional information to the plot and if it is decoded as it was encoded then the audience may experience retrophilia - reflects stereotypes and the lifestyle of a particular era.

The text has more mainstream features such as the use of well-known film stars. Tommy Shelby, played by Cillian Murphy, has also appeared in highly-acclaimed Hollywood films such as: Batman and Inception. Also, C.I Chester Campbell, played by actor Sam Neil, has also performed in critically-acclaimed films such as Jurassic Park. The use of film stars within the text help to target a more mainstream audience through them being able to recognise actors from the text and judging them on their success from these Hollywood films which would then imply that Peaky Blinders may be of the same quality and so an audience may trust it more and are more likely to watch it.