Every long-running series needs a matriarch - from Doris Speed's Annie Walker and Pat Phoenix's Elsie Tanner in Coronation Street to Noele Gordon's Meg Mortimer in Crossroads, they were the stuff of soap opera legend.
And then came Sue Johnston's Sheila Corkhill (Grant) in Brookside and Anita Dobon's Angie Watts in Brookside to continue the theme.
Fast forward to September 12, 2013 and the extraordinary beginning to a new BBC TV drama series called Peaky Blinders, one that would introduce Cillian Murphy's Thomas Shelby riding on a jet-black horse through an industrial scene in the West Midlands looking every inch as if he owned the place.
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This week's announcement of a Rambert dance theatre production means we'll see Peaky Blinders - The Redemption of Thomas Shelby capitalising on the rhythm of heavy industry following a battle scene in Flanders.
At the same time that episode one was beginning more than eight years ago, the introductory credits began rolling from two minutes 49 seconds.
The first name up was Cillian Murphy followed by that of guest star Sam Neill (Jurassic Park).
And the third name on the list in this world of macho posturing just 15 seconds after Cillian's?
Helen McCrory. who would soon be entering the fray as Elizabeth 'Aunt Polly' Gray.
Sitting in the stalls of Birmingham Hippodrome where he'd been helping to launch this September's forthcoming world premiere of the new dance theatre version of Peaky Blinders, Steven Knight nods with appreciation when I point out just how high up the list Helen was on the list of credits before that unforgettable first scene was even over.
He knew all along what she would mean to the show's success.
Since then, five full series have been screened with a total of 30 episodes - with just six more to go from February when series six gets underway ahead of a film that is due to be shot in Birmingham next year.
Sadly, Helen died from breast cancer on April 16, 2021. The London born mother-of-two was aged just 52.
Filming for the sixth series was less than a week away when the first lockdown was announced and Helen, who'd kept her illness quiet during work on the fifth series, died during the eventual shoot.
The year of Covid would cost Peaky Blinders a seventh series - hence the sixth will be the last, followed by the film.
But the gap from the world premiere of series five - held at Birmingham Town Hall almost three years ago on July 19, 2019 - to Helen's death nearly two years later, is an enormous one for everyone who knew how vital she had been to the global success of a show whose riveting sense of mythology, time and place gives it a rare ability to transcend boundaries of nations and cultures.
Confirming that she could not possibly be replaced, Steven said: "When something like this happens, the tragedy (of losing Helen) is 1,000 times bigger than any issue that is a consequence for the show.
"Helen was someone who was so brilliant, so full of life, so loved it doesn't matter about any difficulties we have to overcome.
"She was one of the three central characters and grew along with all of the other actors and characters.
"(Her death) just shows that you never know..."
Steven said the sixth series had all been completed but the film had not even been written yet.
"It's all in my head," he said. "I've written it in my head - I know what's going to happen!"
Perhaps one day, once the entire saga has been put to bed, Steven will reveal what he had in store for Helen's Polly - last seen resigning from the company whose ill-gotten gains she'd kept tabs on for so long, coincidentally in an episode when Thomas Shelby (Cillian Murphy) was talking about bereavements.
Now is not the time to remember Helen for what might have been, more to recall how she had also played Cherie Blair opposite Michael Sheen's Tony Blair in Stephen Frears' 2006 movie The Queen, as well as Draco's witch mother Narcissa Malfoy in the final three episodes of the Harry Potter series.
She was also a renowned stage actress, whose ability had been recognised and encouraged at school by Thane Bettany, father of actor Paul Bettany.
In one of her last small screen performances, Helen played a defence counsel in the 2020 drama Quiz about the 'coughing major' story from Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
Appointed an OBE in 2017, Helen had married star actor Damian Lewis in 2007 with whom she had children Manon and Gulliver.
Looking back at Helen's life for The Guardian in December 2021, Peaky Blinders co-star Cillian Murphy said: "I think the key relationship was always between my character, Tommy, and her character, Polly. It was complex. She was his aunt, but sometimes his mother and sometimes his sister. At times, they were almost a husband and wife team.
Cillian added: "Helen gave Polly that matriarchal aspect and imbued her with a degree of humanity and fallibility that a lot of people connected with. Family is central to the drama in Peaky Blinders."
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