Before sitting down to score the new series, Calvi intentionally did not binge-watch the entire show as a refresher: “I specifically didn’t, because I didn’t want to get influenced by the music that had come before. Although I had watched it a while ago, I wanted to go in fresh and make sure that I did music that was for me, not what I thought they would want.”

With the daunting task ahead of her, Calvi was sent the new episodes (sometimes not finished edits) with just the dialogue captured: “In the practical sense, I would have the episode on my computer, with the dialogue. As I was watching, I’d have my guitar and vocal mic, and I would be responding instinctively to what was happening – that’s how I began the process of writing, and then I would go back and sculpt it.”

Anyone that has seen any of the season’s deleted scenes will know how strange they sound without music. “It is odd, and it kind of makes you realise how much it affects what you watch,” agrees Calvi. “The music underneath has a really big influence over what you are watching.”

Being new to the process, Calvi took a month to produce the score for episode one, but quickly got into the swing of things.

“The first episode took the longest, but as I went on, I got quicker. I think it was becoming more like a week per episode. They would have deadlines because they would need to colour it and do the sound effects, and that’s new to me too. With my own music, the deadline is basically my deadline, whereas this time, so many other people are working on it, so you can’t be the one to be like: ‘Oh, I need an extra week’. It was like having a proper job and going: ‘Shit, actually, there is a deadline!’ [laughs]. So there were a few all-nighters that I had to do to get everything done!”





It was very important to Calvi to capture the initial, emotional response that the images and dialogue gave her, sitting at her laptop with just a guitar and a Neumann U67 mic. “That’s all I need really, it’s pretty basic!”

Speaking about her 2018 album, Hunter, Calvi expresses that she wants to go beyond gender – not wanting to have to choose between the male and female in her. “I believe that gender is a spectrum. I believe that if we were allowed to be somewhere in the middle, not pushed to the extremes of performed masculinity and femininity, we would all be more free.”

With Shelby’s mental state in decline and as the calculated violence ramps up, through the score Calvi wanted to give his character a subconscious feminine voice to further unnerve viewers.

“The interesting thing about Tommy is that you fall in love with someone who is multifaceted, and not just one thing. There’s a lot of complexity to the character, and so I felt like I wanted to bring out some of this side of him – whatever feminine means, because to me, feminine in his case is his darkest and most twisted side. There’s a complexity to that that I find really interesting.”

Season five saw Shelby cousin, Michael Gray make power moves of his own, seemingly turning against the Peaky Blinders. “The interesting thing is the idea about whether or not Tommy can trust him,” says Calvi. “There was one point where I was watching the episodes with Anthony and I said: ‘Is he telling the truth?’ And Anthony didn’t want to tell me whether he was, because he liked the idea of me not knowing either. The idea with the music was to leave that open, because even I don’t know. There’s a sense of unease about that.”

As source material, season five has given Calvi a lot to play with. Complicated narratives, quotable one-liners, and cunning plans that would put Baldrick to shame play out against a smorgasbord of ostentatious ‘20s glamour and opulence. The gang are out of their depth in high society, trying to pass themselves off as upstanding members of the community, however, the inevitable pull of violence, power struggles, turf-wars and revenge are never far from their minds. “We all try and get away, but we never do,” warns the gravel-voiced head of the family, Polly.