The dramatic allure of families neck-deep in organised crime never seems to falter, and Stephen Butchard’s new series continues that great tradition in rambunctious style. Sean Bean (pictured below) plays Ronnie Phelan, paterfamilias of a Liverpool cocaine-importing operation, with Jack McMullen as his son Jamie. Julie Graham steps up to the plate as Ronnie’s wife, Elaine.
However, it’s inherent in the theme that blood will be thicker than water. The man who has helped Ronnie build his Scouse drug empire is Michael Kavanagh, played with watchful, steely-eyed menace by James Nelson-Joyce. But when it appears that Ronnie has been planning to write him out of the business in favour of son Jamie, Michael finds himself facing a fight-or-flight moment. He has no hesitation in picking “fight”.
The action bounces between the grey and shabby streets of Liverpool (though with plenty of airtime for VisitLiverpool landmarks like the Liver Building and the Metropolitan Cathedral) and the Phelans’ luxurious estate on Spain’s celebrated Costa del Crime, amid epic mountain landscapes under a golden Mediterranean light. It looks like the epitome of the good life. Indeed, the song of the same name is ironically sung over one particularly piquant scene, with Ronnie Phelan being a connoisseur of classic crooners (nice to see a name-check for the great Matt Monro, too).
Though gangster dynasties fighting among themselves has become a hardy perennial in the history of popular entertainment, This City… commands your attention with its array of contrasting characters played by a fine array of actors (even if it’s sometimes like being dropped into an extended episode of Harry Enfield’s The Scousers). Bean comfortably blends a blokey bonhomie with casual ruthlessness, while McMullen’s Jamie exudes a slippery untrustworthiness which has you looking back uncomfortably over your shoulder.
There’s some powerful stuff, too, from Mike Noble as Michael’s right-hand man Banksey, alongside solid side-man turns from Kevin Harvey as Bobby Duffy and Adam Abbou as Freddie. But it’s Nelson-Joyce’s dark and driven Michael who commands most of the attention.
As well as being the point man for the drug operation, and enjoying an interestingly complex relationship with the gang’s Colombian contact man Ricardo (Daniel Cerqueira), Michael is negotiating his relationship with Diana (Hannah Onslow). Not only are they in the midst of Diana’s programme of IVF treatment, which is placing extra stress on both parties, but Diana also comes equipped with a dark and harrowing back-story which continues to cast a long shadow over her. It also eerily mirrors events playing out inside the Phelan operation.
Although gangster-land is almost inevitably a tsunami of macho male-dom, the female characters here boldly stake out their own turf with a powerful array of contrasting performances. While Julie Graham brings a battered world-weariness to the role of Elaine, Saoirse-Monica Jackson wrings buckets of pathos and desperation from her role of Cheryl Crawford, who finds herself ostracised in a kind of twilight-zone widowhood (Jackson pictured above with Stephen Walters as Davy Crawford). Laura Aikman dominates the role of Rachel Duffy, the in-house bookkeeper, with tigerish intensity, determined that the boys’ power games aren’t going to sabotage everything that they’ve collectively built up. You might say what crime pays with one hand, it takes away with the other.
- This City is Ours continues on BBC One on Sundays at 9pm. All episodes available on BBC iPlayer
- More TV reviews on theartsdesk
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