This City Is Ours is a crime drama epic filmed in Liverpool and Spain that comes with creative pedigree. The series stars Sean Bean and comes from The Crown producer Left Bank Pictures. All episodes will become available on the BBC iPlayer streaming service from 6 a.m. London time on Sunday, with the series beginning to air on BBC One in its weekly 9 p.m. time slot that night. Sony Pictures Television is distributing the series internationally.
The eight-part show was created and written by Stephen Butchard (The Good Mothers, The Last Kingdom, Five Daughters) and directed by Saul Dibb (The Salisbury Poisonings, The Sixth Commandment) and John Hayes (Nightsleeper, Dublin Murders).
Bean (Marriage, Time) plays crime gang leader Ronnie Phelan, with James Nelson-Joyce (Bird, A Thousand Blows) portraying Ronnie’s friend Michael Kavanagh. Hannah Onslow (Empire of Light, This Is Going to Hurt) plays Diana Williams, Michael’s partner, while Jack McMullen (Hijack, Ford v Ferrari) is Ronnie’s son, Jamie Phelan. Julie Graham (Shetland, Time) portrays Ronnie’s wife Elaine, the head of the Phelan family alongside her husband.
The show tells the story of Michael, “a man who for all of his adult life has been involved in organized crime… but for the first time in his life, Michael is in love,” according to a synopsis. It details his love affair with Diana set against the looming disintegration of his criminal work. “For years, together with his friend Ronnie, Michael has successfully been bringing cocaine into the city and beyond, directly from Colombia,” says the plot summary. “But when a shipment goes missing, he knows their Kingdom is under attack.”
Nelson-Joyce and other cast members and creators recently discussed This City Is Ours during a panel session organized during the London TV Screenings.
“Sean is a gentleman,” he said about collaborating with Bean, with whom he had also worked on prison drama Time, and the rest of the team. “We were very lucky and very fortunate. We’re all mates. And it did help that for the first four weeks of filming we were in Spain. We were all in this complex together, and we all built up this family relationship so quickly. There was already a respect there. And from me for Sean anyway. How can you not admire him? So it was easy to portray that father figure [relationship] with him. And then the great writing does it all for you really.”
The show’s themes are universal and will appeal to a broad audience, Nelson-Joyce also said. “We’ve all done stuff that we’re not proud of, and we all love people,” the actor shared. “And it’s just unfortunate that it’s a time in Michael’s life where it’s all a bit of a crossroads.”
The fact that the characters have layers makes them more interesting for actors but hopefully also for audiences, he signaled. “Everyone is complex,” Nelson-Joyce explained. “I think that’s the beauty of any great writing, which is what Stephen’s done. When you watch Walter White or you watch The Sopranos, and you watch all these programs, even though these people are doing bad things, you still root for them. We all love Walter White. We all love Tony Soprano.”
The creative team was also asked about the key roles religion and the church play in This City Is Ours, with someone pointing out how important faith groups still are to Liverpool’s social fabric. “Less and less, people have faith or believe in faith,” argued writer Butchard. “Fewer and fewer people believe in God, but churches still host christenings, weddings, and funerals. It’s almost as though it still remains a touchstone, even though it’s more of a gathering in name. People still need a place to come together.”
The Liverpool accent was something that was also key for the cast and creative team. “We had a brilliant voice and dialect coach [Helen Ashton], and it really helped being surrounded by actors from Liverpool [such as Nelson-Joyce] who would point you in the right direction,” Julie Graham recalled. “Just having that accent in your ear all the time really helped. And our sound guy Jimmy who’s a scouser [meaning a person from Liverpool] was brilliant.”
Onslow also turned to a popular TV show that has featured people from Liverpool for some help. “I also watched Love Island clips,” she shared. “That was helpful.”
Graham then mentioned an unusual aspect of the local language. “The women in Liverpool have a different accent,” she said. “It’s the only accent in the whole of the U.K. where the men and women speak differently. There are all kinds of nuances. And then there’s generational differences as well.”
Butchard also emphasized the importance of including comedic moments in This City Is Ours. “That’s who these people are,” he said about the crime family milieu. “So, I think it’s representative as well. To be honest, with a couple of jokes we had to be careful because I thought they were undermining moments of drama. But I’ll always try and put humor in there, and always try and make the humor true to the people so that the characters would actually be saying it. It’s just very much part of that world really, particularly perhaps because they see darker things as well.”
The series received investment from the Liverpool City Council’s Film Office via its Liverpool City Region Combined Authority LCR Production Fund. The film office says the production already boosted the Liverpool City region economy by £9.0 million ($11.7 million).
Watch the trailer for This City Is Ours below.
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