The Immortal Man – or why I’ll never pay for a TV “licence”

Many years ago, when I moved to the UK, I paid for the TV licence (yes, that’s how they spell it here). The whole thing seemed a bit strange to me. The reason? You had to buy one – with the money going to the BBC – if you were watching ANY sort of live TV. So, if you were watching a different channel, one not owned by the BBC, you’d STILL have to pay for a licence, and the BBC would get the money. That seemed absurd – and it was. It’s like being forced to pay me a monthly fee just because you visit other websites – not mine, just websites in general.

I don’t watch TV. Not with the pride you’d hear from some hipster saying, “I don’t watch TV.” I just… I don’t care. About anything “on.”

News? I don’t trust TV for that. I’ve caught them red-handed too many times (including the BBC, yes; unfortunately for them, I’m not the only one).

Films and series? Fuck them. History is one of my hobbies. So the first time I noticed the “good” people at the BBC taking a whole lot of creative liberties with their shows, I got angry. They had this show – The Musketeers. Like most kids of that era, I grew up reading Alexandre Dumas’s books: The Three Musketeers, The Count of Moret, The Count of Monte Cristo. I know the story, the backstories, the characters. So when the BBC made Porthos the son of a slave, sent him to fight slavery, and did all of this within the first three episodes… I cancelled the licence. My reaction: “I’m not paying for this retarded shit.”

The original story was set during Louis XIV’s reign. There were about zero abolitionists in France at the time. By 1788 – over a century later – there were roughly 141 abolitionists. Why? Because slavery wasn’t legal in France, though it was in the colonies. Porthos had a servant in the book; he wasn’t some anti-slavery crusader. But the BBC didn’t care – they cast someone who may or may not be of mixed heritage and made him a slave’s son fighting slavery in the mid-17th century. And it wasn’t just him. The other characters were butchered for modern tastes: women had to be strong, independent, smart, leaders. Constance de Bonacieux? Shooting guns, winning sword duels, basically a modern action hero.

In the book, she’s a minor character. A victim of circumstance. She has a brief romance with d’Artagnan, is betrayed, kidnapped, and then dead. The series? She’s now a “modern woman” because the audience apparently can’t handle anything less.

I don’t pay for the licence, I don’t watch their shit – mostly. My wife enjoys Netflix, so I occasionally see BBC content there. Imagine my despair – but it’s cheaper than a divorce.

Now, the latest nonsense: The Immortal Man, a “Peaky Blinders film.” The Peaky Blinders universe is already absurd – nothing makes sense. Creative liberties abound: women are strong, smart, natural leaders; men are dumb. So the film opens with women gathering to work the night shift at the Birmingham Small Arms factory. They all die during a birthday celebration when the factory is bombed by the Nazis, circa 1940. In reality? The workers were men. Creative liberties.

Tommy, the respected and feared gangster, barely killed anyone during the series. Some loser here, some loser there. He wouldn’t even be respected in a juvenile correction home in England. Yet, in his old age, he’s STILL suffering from PTSD from WWI – 22 years later in 1940. He doesn’t want to live. He wants to die, mostly because some relatives are gone – brother, useless aunt, whatever. He lives almost alone, just him and his Gypsy servant/friend Johnny, for reasons never explained. Everyone else is gone.

Tommy abandoned his old life to write a book. Gangsters are apparently talented writers. He’s left “everything” – basically a shabby pub – to his eldest son, Duke, played by Barry Keoghan.

On a side note, Barry Keoghan proves the Brits over in Ireland must’ve massacred everyone who resembled a human, because there’s no other explanation for Barry Keoghan being considered an actor. I’m not going to say that he’s got a face only a mother could love, but I strongly suspect that his mother – bless her – must’ve been forced to tie sausages around his neck when he was a child because that was the only way to get a living being – dogs, in this case – to play with him. I’m saying if he walked up to the town whore, she might pretend that she’s waiting for the bus.

Out of nowhere, a Gypsy queen, played by Rebecca Ferguson, appears. Beautiful, talented, Nordic-Scandinavian type. Casting her as a Gypsy makes as much sense as casting Idris Elba as a Viking. Creative liberties, did I mention that?

The Gypsy queen has this plan – she’s going to manipulate Tommy into saving his son (from fuck knows what), getting him (Tommy) killed in the process. Because that’s the only way for Tommy to ever have “peace”. I say, chaps, fuck this – let’s just put her in charge of the Middle East. I’ll just bet shit’s going to be reaaaal quiet over there in no time at all.

Meanwhile, Ada (Tommy’s sister) is an MP. Sure, a Gypsy whore becoming an MP during the war. Why not? Creative liberties strike again, and Ada too wants Tommy to do something about Duke – but for a different reason. You see, Duke is bad. He’s doing bad stuff – for example, robbing the recently bombed Birmingham Small Arms factory in broad daylight with about 100 witnesses there, using little more than his fists and around 10 random unarmed chavs. Sure. Why not? Not like the man would be put down – along with everyone he ever knew – in about 10 minutes. Who cares about martial law? Not Duke. Not the writers.

Meanwhile, the Nazis have this master plan. They’re falsifying British banknotes – that’s their plan for destroying Britain’s economy. Bitch, bitte, does it look like we need your help?

They’ve printed about 350,000,000 sterling, and they’re about to release them in the UK, where they’ll – no doubt – fuck up the British economy. “What economy???” one might wonder, given the situation in 1940, but NEVER MIND THAT, CREATIVE LIBERTIES. Alas, the poor Nazis just need Tommy’s son to help them distribute that. It’s not quite clear why, just like it’s not quite clear why they’d bother doing anything in Birmingham; I would’ve expected London to be the target, but hey, perhaps the Nazis just didn’t know where to start. That was their plan (in the film). The banknotes are somehow shipped to Liverpool – in a container full of suitcases, yes – and they end up in a warehouse. Why? Nobody knows. How would a random “gangster” (really, any gangster I can think of would be insulted to hear that that pathetic crook was called a “gangster”) distribute 350M? Nobody knows – but he’s supposed to get 70M. That’s his “cut”. Say what will about the Nazis, they sure were far more generous than the average British employer. Hearing that offer does make one wonder whether the right side won the war. I guess we’ll never know… if we haven’t figured it out by now.

Either way, Ada – the Gypsy MP – is determined to turn Duke in. She’s gathering “evidence” (as if that would’ve been required), and she intends to turn it over to the Military Police – thus ensuring that Duke gets hanged. But this random Brit, who also happens to be a fascist sympathiser, warns Duke and even asks Duke to kill Ada – his aunt. It’s something Duke gets ready to do, but he just CAN’T. There he is, hidden in a telephone booth, ready to kill her, but he just… can’t. Fortunately, the same fascist sympathiser kills her in front of him, thus saving Duke’s bacon. Needless to say, Duke is devastated that the woman who was about to get him killed is killed in front of him for NO REASON WHATSOEVER. Fuck logic, did I mention that? In fact, Duke is proud – he didn’t kill Ada, as he tells Tommy, because Ada was FAMILY. Never mind Ada also being a treasonous whore, she was FAMILY. He’s a proper Gypsy; he wouldn’t kill FAMILY.

Tommy is pissed off. Ada – a cunt he never liked, by the way – has been killed. So he teams up with his son – Duke – to get to the killer, to destroy the banknotes, and to save the British economy in the process. But Tommy knows that the Gypsy Queen has been up to no good. Somehow, he just knows that she asked his son to kill him.

For whatever reason, Tommy gets three boats loaded with explosives (never mind that the British government couldn’t even manufacture enough rifles at the time; Tommy has no problem getting what appears to be tons of explosives because fuck logic again) and sends them towards the warehouse – which just happens to be in Liverpool. At the same time, he’s crawling through various tunnels – once again triggering his PTSD – in order to take a different route to the warehouse.

Ah, the warehouse. The warehouse is defended by proper German-speaking Nazis, with machine guns and whatnot. Because, yep, of course, Nazis who only spoke German (so much so that they needed to have English translated to them) would pass undetected through Liverpool. Of course they would. Of course nobody noticed their presence, their faces, their accent, their… machine guns???

But of course, Tommy’s master plan kind of works. He destroys the banknotes using a landmine. Yes. You read that right. He throws a landmine at a wooden container in order to blow up the banknotes. Because half a litre of petrol would’ve been too fucking easy, I guess. I mean, it’s fucking paper. But no. Nope. We need a landmine. Why? Because fuck you, that’s why. He manages to kill Ada’s killer – but not before getting shot in the gut twice (because my man doesn’t bother taking cover or whatever, why would he?). He is, of course, dying. So he embraces his son, asking Duke to kill him, just like he’d kill a wounded horse. Eventually, Duke complies, killing his own father. Yes, Duke. The same Duke who wouldn’t/couldn’t kill his treasonous, snitching aunt because she was fAmILy – yes, he just kills the father he spent half the film crying over like a little bitch. No problem.

The film ends. Gypsies (or gangsters? no clue) have once again saved the day (??) by blowing up an entire fucking warehouse with 10 kilotons of explosives in order to destroy some paper.

As such, Tommy is killed (by his own son) and cremated; nobody cares, because let’s face it, Cillian Murphy is too old to make a comeback anyway. If the man read the script and agreed to play the part, I think it’s safe to say that he’ll take the Nicholas Cage route – acting in anything that makes a quick buck. No standards whatsoever. Might as well.

We’re left wondering. Why would you blow up the entire fucking warehouse just to burn some paper? Why would you want to reconcile with your son, only to ask him to kill you afterwards – what kind of fucked-up burden is that? Why would you give a shit about some self-proclaimed Gypsy queen? Why would your son – a Gypsy – work with the Nazis, who wanted his entire “race” to be… erm… “removed”? Why would a weapons manufacturer have a night shift consisting of women only in 1940? Why would they celebrate someone’s birthday with fucking candles in a munitions factory? Why would the Nazis need what looks like… less than 15 Birmingham chavs to distribute 350M in the UK? Why would you need a landmine to burn down some banknotes? If you’re that determined to die, why not just kill yourself instead of asking your son to kill you? Do your Christian beliefs preclude you from taking your own life, so that you don’t end up in Hell? If so, where would your son end up after a proper patricide? Do you give a shit? Knowing what PTSD is like, why would you ask your own son to kill you, what would that do to him? Why would you make up a story about the fucking MP being gunned down in the middle of the street – with that MP being a Gypsy woman?

None of it makes any sense.

The end. The end of logic. The end of common sense. The end of respect for history. The end of writers. The end of shame. The end of anyone giving a shit when writers are simply replaced by “AI” (read: LLMs), because let’s face it: at this point, we’ve got nothing to lose anyway. No matter how retarded LLMs might be, they can’t come up with anything dumber than whatever this is.