David Bianculli

The movie Peaky Blinders' The Immortal Man 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, played by 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, played by Barry Keoghan, leaves him little choice.

Duke meets with Beckett, a British Nazi sympathizer played by Tim Roth, who finds in Duke an important and agreeable collaborator.

Their meeting begins with Beckett handing Duke a British pound note.

Once that's in play, very early on, Tommy Shelby 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 Stephen Knight's hands, more unpredictable or gripping.

He 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 Paki 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.

A Thousand Blows, The Veil, House of Guinness, All the Light We Cannot See, and some that eluded me at the time, but which I've caught up with and have been delighted by.

like Taboo from 2017, which featured great early performances by both Tom Hardy and Jesse 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...