Peaky Blinders: Filming with a PJ Harvey trilogy

One of the things that I liked very much about the first series of Peaky Blinders was the use of atmospheric contemporary music within the palette of the soundtrack. This was something that I was keen to develop and refine as part of my approach to directing series two. I loved the use of Nick Cave's songs and along with show creator Steven Knight and the music producers, we all discussed that the track Red Right Hand was part of the brand and we decided to keep this. We use it playfully throughout the series with several other versions and different contexts changing its meaning and feel.

One thing that changed this year around the overall tone of the show was Steve's notion that the first series was opium and this second series was cocaine. I took this mostly to represent the hunger and ambition of Tommy Shelby as well as the loosening grip on reality and emotional peaks and troughs of the other characters. Therefore I wanted this year to have a different voice within the music and to blend the original tracks into the score in a way that would make the music more cohesive in its voice.

My fantasy from fairly early on was both to use music by PJ Harvey within the source tracks, and to find a way to collaborate with her. Cillian Murphy, who plays Tommy Shelby, is great friends with Flood, the producer who has worked with Polly Harvey (as well as Nick Cave) and we began to talk about whether there might be a way for this to work. We needed someone else in the process who could create an original score from Polly’s music and Flood suggested Paul Hartnoll (formerly of Orbital) as a final collaborator in the process.

The creation of music for the show began with When Under Ether by PJ Harvey.

I knew that I wanted to use this for Tommy's epic recovery canal boat journey in episode two from early on. In the first series violence was often handled in a way that was heavily stylised - using slow motion photography and blissed out white noise soundtrack.

I wanted the violence to feel overly vivid and intense. Somehow I wanted the violent acts to have larger consequence and danger for our central characters. At the end of episode one, I wanted the audience to feel that Tommy might actually die for real. I tried to achieve this through use of overly long held takes, hand held cameras getting into and becoming involved in the action and small shutter angle (also known as a skinny shutter) creating sharper, more vivid images for these moments.

I also knew that When Under Ether contained the emotional tone that I wanted certain aspects of the story to be saturated in. Flood deconstructed the track from the multi-tracks and Paul composed around and from that in a way that was sympathetic to Polly’s original, supportive of the drama and content of the scenes, and emotionally moving in a direct manner.

In the end Paul's score is very much his music, but the process to get there means that it belongs absolutely to the same world as Polly’s compositions that make up the heart of our world: When Under Ether, Down By The Water, To Bring You My Love being the central trilogy (though we have used many other tracks of hers through the show).

Colm McCarthy is the director of series two of Peaky Blinders.

Peaky Blinders continues on Thursday, 6 November at 9pm on BBC Two and BBC Two HD. For further programme times please see the episode guide.

More on The Peaky Blinders 

BBC Production: Listen to an extended interview with Colm McCarthy

BBC Production: Listen to an extended interview with Steven Knight

BBC Radio 6 Music: Cillian Murphy and Flood speak to Lauren Laverne

Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.