That format became an enormous hit for ITV and around the world. “It just went mad,” Knight recalls, remembering a headline in the American press calling the quiz “The Show that Saved the Mouse” on account of its Stateside success for Disney’s then-beleaguered ABC.
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’s huge popularity led to it airing in 120 countries and being translated to 80 languages. That obviously made it profitable for its creators. Asked on The Media Show about his earnings, Knight said he has no complaints about his financial compensation. “It liberated me to be able to write stuff that I wanted to write.” That included Knight’s second feature screenplay Dirty Pretty Thingsabout two irregular immigrants in London who become entangled in a murder. The film was directed by Stephen Frears, starred Chiwetel Ejiofor and Audrey Tautou, and earned Knight an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
The film and its Oscar nomination “kick-started a completely different part of my career,” Knight (now credited as Steven, not Steve) tells The Media Show. He became a Hollywood screenwriter, writing a series of feature films including the David Cronenberg-directed Eastern Promisesthe award-winning Locke starring Tom Hardy (which Knight also directed), and many more.
One of the projects Knight now felt liberated to write was a period drama drawn from childhood memories of the stories he’d heard from his family in Small Heath, Birmingham. Knight was sick of the English working classes being portrayed on screen as pitiful and wan, he wanted to – as he told Den of Geek – “do legends” and mythologise those people in the same way that US Western films mythologised cowboys.
In 2014, Peaky Blinders made its BBC Two weeknight debut to much bafflement over the name, and growing excitement from what would become a worldwide army of devoted fans. It’s soon to air its final series on BBC One in the prestige drama Sunday night slot, and later, on Netflix around the world – a show that might never have existed without the financial freedom provided by Who Wants to be a Millionaire.
Peaky Blinders series six starts on BBC One and iPlayer on Sunday the 27th of February at 9pm.