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Where are the world's top cultural destinations? Rome, Florence, Athens... and now Birmingham, thanks to Peaky Blinders, the hugely popular BBC show that follows the violent exploits of the Shelby family and its charismatic leader, Tommy (Cillian Murphy).

A record 42.8 million screen touristsWhen the location of a film or TV series becomes a popular sight for tourists. One of the most distinctive locations from Peaky Blinders is The Black Country Living Museum in Dudley. travelled to Birmingham last year, many of them to visit the old haunts of the real-life Peaky Blinders, a criminal gangAlthough the real Peaky Blinders gang had vanished by the 1930s, the name remained synonymous with any Birmingham street gang for much longer. that terrorised the West Midlands from the 1890s to the 1930s. Visits to the city have soared by 26% since 2013, when the series first aired.

The show is also believed to be behind a rise in the number of babies called Arthur and Ada, both members of the Shelby clan. New figures show that Ada leaped 49 places last year to enter the top 100 names for the first time in a century.

It's even influencing the clothes we wear. The internet is abuzz with advice pieces on "How to dress like Peaky Blinders", packed full of tweed suits and penny collars. The Office for National StatisticsAn organisation that provides official statistics for the UK. (ONS) recently added the gang's signature peaked caps to a list of UK shoppers' top buys.

The show, which has just returned for its fifth season, is the latest series to play to audiences' fascination with the criminal underworld. The handsome, brooding Tommy Shelby now ranks among iconic on-screen gangsters from Michael Corleone to Tony Soprano.

And he's every bit as brutal. The Peaky Blinders' gang name derives from the razor blades sewn into their peaked caps and used to blind their enemies. Over the course of the series, Tommy is hired as an assassin and plots to sell guns to IRA terrorists.

Why do we admire and seek to emulate these characters whose murderous acts of cruelty should horrify us?

"There's something immensely aspirational about it - this sense that they can do anything," says David Wilson, Professor of CriminologyThe scientific study of law enforcement and criminal justice. at Birmingham City University. "They take risks that we would never take in real life."

Why are we so fascinated by gangsters? Is evil simply more interesting than good? Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology, believed we all possess an "id" - a part of the mind made up of our basest, unrestrained instincts. It's this side of us that revels in menacing characters; the same part of us that longs to break free from society's rules of acceptance and respectability. Perhaps we envy these characters' freedom to do as they please.

But if TV gangsters just represented our worst instincts, wouldn't that be boring and one dimensional? What makes compelling 'baddies' is their blend of light and dark. Tommy is both a brooding killer and a dedicated father and husband. And as with all great, wicked fictional heroes, we are transfixed, watching Tommy's internal battle of good versus evil.