Birmingham, 1919. There's gangs, abject poverty and hordes of desperate people scraping a living in whatever way they can, from crude horse-racing scams and smuggling to extortion. The universal poverty is leavened only by the effects of alcohol and drugs.
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Men scarred from the trenches of World War I have returned to their suffragette womenfolk, who have been capably running the books in their absence. Bolsheviks, unionists and the IRA are fuelling the seeds of discontent with appealing alternatives.
A more immediate problem is that a sizeable arsenal of weapons has gone missing from the docks. There's certainly a lot happening in the first episode of this sprawling BBC period drama, which for good reason has won mostly favourable comparisons to HBO's Boardwalk Empire.
The title refers to the gangs that were based in Birmingham at the turn of the 20th century. Here, the leader of the gang is Thomas Shelby (Cillian Murphy), another charismatic yet ruthless and scheming bad apple with ambiguous motives, ambition, weaknesses and a unique code of honour.
He has enemies from within and without. In the latter category is fire-and-brimstone-spouting Inspector Chester Campbell (Sam Neill), who has been dispatched to Birmingham to find the cache of missing weapons and weed out the cops who are in the pockets of the Peaky Blinders. In the former are other members of the Shelby clan who are unaware of Thomas' role in the missing weapons or the dangerous liaison upon which he is about to embark with Grace Burgess (Annabelle Wallis).
Like many establishing episodes, this one comes close to suffocating on its mother lode of themes, characters and storylines, as well as some overly heavy-handed exposition revealing the collision courses on which its characters are set. ''Maybe you'll have to put a bullet in my head some day too,'' Freddie Thorne (Iddo Goldberg) tells Thomas early in episode one.
Peaky Blinders is mostly saved, however, by its sharply drawn characters, the grim but oddly compelling production design and a willingness to leave behind the comforts of the heritage costume drama.
Like Boardwalk Empire, there's a modern sensibility coursing through Peaky Blinders, from its soundtrack, which freely blends traditional folk songs with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, to its interest in exploring the moral relativism of its characters and their predicaments.
Peaky Blinders will air on BBC First, which launches in August.
