Original Gangsters with Sean Bean | Preview (Sky History)

Over four gripping one-hour episodes, acclaimed actor Sean Bean guides audiences on a compelling journey into the lives of history’s most notorious criminals. Who were they really, and what can their stories tell us about the world today?

From Al Capone to the real Peaky Blinders, from The Krays twins to the Queen of Harlem, each episode of Original Gangsters follows Sean Bean on a deep dive through a rogues’ gallery of some of the most notorious criminals in history. Sean is joined by a team of experts to separate fact from fiction to find out what they mean today and why their legacies have lasted.

From award-winning production company Redeeming Features, this exclusive Sky HISTORY series fuses cinematic reenactment and expert talking head interviews to bring these infamous characters to life, like never before. We will hear from some of the world’s leading experts on each of our four subjects: Al Capone, The Peaky Blinders, Stephanie St Clair and Billy Hill and the Krays, to find out what made these extraordinary characters tick.

In the first episode, Delving into the reality behind Steven Knight’s smash hit BBC drama, Sean Bean unveils the real-life Peaky Blinders who terrorised Birmingham in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

From the labyrinthine alleyways of industrial Birmingham in the 1860s through riots and deadly gang warfare where the city’s ruffians battled with police, to the early twentieth century where rogue street mobs coalesced to become organised and eventually united under the hand of one man: Billy Kimber.

With testimony from Carl Chinn, the world’s leading expert on Birmingham crime and the Peaky Blinders, discover more on the people behind history’s first intercity gang war.

More details will be announced in due course.