Organised crime in Liverpool takes centre stage in a new thriller from Left Bank. Carole Solazzo spills the beans
All gas, no brakes: that’s how actor Kevin Harvey describes the wild ride of filming This City Is Ours, a gripping, new high-stakes crime drama from Left Bank Pictures.
Harvey, who plays gang member Bobby Duffy, was talking at an RTS North West screening of the BBC One series in Liverpool last month. The drama stars Sean Bean as Ronnie Phelan, boss of a Liverpool crime gang. Phelan got rich by importing cocaine with help from Colombian “amigos”, based in Spain, and his younger right-hand man, Michael Kavanagh, played by James Nelson-Joyce, who recently starred in A Thousand Blows.
Kavanagh has been groomed to take over from Phelan, who plans to retire after one last consignment. But after falling in love with “outsider” Diana Williams (Hannah Onslow), the younger man sees a different kind of life opening up. Meanwhile, Phelan’s wife, Elaine (Julie Graham), is the power behind the throne and has her own king-maker ambitions.
When that last consignment goes missing, Phelan’s son, Jamie (Jack McMullen), demands action while Kavanagh is conflicted between the loyalty he owes the gang, and love for Diana and the family he longs to have.
Filming on the eight-part series began with a six-week shoot in Spain. Vital to lead director Saul Dibb’s preparation were the locations, including the Phelans’ villa. “It was like choosing a castle for a period film about a king and his court. That’s the power dynamic,” said Dibb the week after the screening. “It’s a big character-driven piece like The Sopranos.
“You’ve got corridors inside and outside. Bedrooms. Round the pool, where everyone’s got this public face,” he said. “But they’ve all got secrets. And you can see everyone but not necessarily hear them.”
After beginning his career in documentary, realism is fundamental for Dibb. But we’re not talking Cathy Come Home-style British 1960s realism. This is, after all, the Costa del Crime.
“Authenticity is the starting point for me,” Dibb said. “We scouted a restaurant for a place where our family would meet the Colombians. Every time we went there, there was a group on a table who looked like gangsters.”
Filming in Spain worked in the actors’ favour too. “It’s a real ensemble piece,” McMullen told the screening audience. “It was good for us not to go home to our families. It gave us a chance to bond.” Darci Shaw, who plays McMullen’s partner, Melissa, agreed: “It felt like a proper family and made the characters real.”
Stephen Butchard, writer and creator of the show, was working on the remaining five episodes while the first three were shot. “I began to see [the characters] as people, and that informed the writing,” he told the audience. Onslow laughed: “The crew ran a sweepstake on how everyone thought the series would end.”
“I won it!” said the writer.
Butchard had nothing but praise for the actors: “As we were going through the casting process, they were ticking all the right boxes. As soon as we started filming, they were the people [they played].”
Dibb described how the “chemistry test” in casting worked. “If you’re casting a couple, it’s important to see how they feel together. If you’re down to a shortlist, you’ll try different combinations of actors to see how they work. When these two people say these words to each other, do you believe it?
“I make it as informal and intimate as possible, with no one else in the room. [For Onslow and Nelson-Joyce] we used a powerful, emotional scene from episode three.”
“It’s a love letter to Liverpool. I’m proud to be a part of it”
Butchard batted away potential criticism about linking Liverpool with crime yet again. Because it reflects Merseyside and its people, the series has a lot of humour: “It stems from the characters – they’re smart and witty. These are characters we have in Liverpool.” Nelson-Joyce agreed: “It’s a love letter to Liverpool. I’m so proud to be a part of it. The architecture is beautiful. You’ve got the river, and Crosby beach... I could go on for ever. But it’s the people who make this city.”
Butchard insisted that This City Is Ours is more than just a crime drama; “It’s exciting, first and foremost,” he said.
“But there are nuances. A Macbeth stroke to it – a family falling apart. It’s about greed and love. The love story with James’s character is a big part of it. When you get down to it, these are not nice people. But I’m hoping the audience will fall in love with them.”
Married to the mob
‘Would “enabler” be an accurate job description for you? Or “accomplice”?’ This question, asked of Carmela Soprano by her therapist, could just as easily be addressed to Elaine Phelan in This City Is Ours. But Julie Graham believes her character is more complicated than that.
Unlike Carmela, who starts off in complete denial, setting herself up as the moral, dutiful wife, Graham said: ‘[Elaine] comes from a normal working-class background, and she meets Ronnie. She knows who he is and what he does right from the beginning.
‘[Initially], she’s very much the matriarch – happy to sit back and let everything happen around her, although she’s very aware of what’s going on within the family business. She wants Ronnie to step back, and she wants her son to take over.’
But things take a darker turn.
‘Through a series of events,’ Graham told Television, ‘Elaine is forced to take a front seat in the family business.’
No wonder the actor – who has portrayed every type of character, from self-absorbed lesbian-next-door in comedy drama At Home with the Braithwaites to Shetland’s strait-laced Kelly, to hard-as-nails prisoner Harkness in Time – was immediately attracted to the role.
‘It was the writing. I expected big things from Stephen Butchard – he’s such a brilliant writer for women. And the way my character was sold to me. I was gripped from the beginning.”
In The Sopranos, mob wives tend to be enablers, and other women are either mistresses or prostitutes, but Butchard’s women in This City Is Ours have far more agency. ‘Rachel, played by Laura Aikman, is our niece,’ Graham said. “Together with Elaine, she runs the money-laundering side of the business. But Rachel has her own ambitions to rise up through the ranks and take more of a lead in the business.
‘Darci Shaw’s character, Melissa, is essentially Elaine’s daughter-in-law. She’s pulling strings in the background.And Cheryl Crawford (Saoirse-Monica Jackson), who starts off as a bit of an outsider, turns into a time bomb waiting to go off and blow holes in the whole organisation. It’s so different from all the other gangster stuff I’ve seen.’
All of which shows that, despite the obvious parallels between This City Is Ours and The Sopranos, these Merseyside women are a world away from Carmela and co in New Jersey.
All episodes of This City Is Ours are available now on BBC iPlayer. The screening and Q&A, hosted by Jay Hynd, were held at Liverpool’s FACT centre on 13 March, and produced for RTS North West by Beautiful Productions.
