This City Is Ours

“There are too many ‘gritty’ drugs gang dramas on TV these days but what makes a refreshing change about this one is that it is modern, witty and authentic, especially the writer Stephen Butchard’s dialogue. It doesn’t take us into depressing junkie squats, but instead shows criminals enjoying their affluence, with luxury houses on the Wirral, sharp suits, nice cars, high-end restaurants.”
Carol Midgley, The Times

“It’s cracking. I binged all eight episodes in two days, and I’m not a big fan of dramas about drugs and guns. It’s a tense crime thriller of betrayals and shifting loyalties, but it’s also about family dynamics and the day-to-day of running a successful business when that business happens to be dealing in shipments of cocaine.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph

“There is no shame in emulating the greats. But This City Is Ours wants to be Liverpool’s answer to The Godfather so badly that the reek of desperation is in danger of fogging up the screen like stale cigarette smoke. In the Marlon Brando role of monosyllabic patriarch is Sean Bean, whose charisma cannot overcome a turgid and implausible script.”
Ed Power, The i

“While the conflicted emotional openness of Liverpudlian gangster Michael Kavanagh (James Nelson-Joyce) isn’t the dominant theme of the BBC’s gripping new Sunday night thriller This City is Ours, it is a distinct subplot… In a world of boilerplate crime dramas populated by cookie-cutter criminals, this willingness to embrace moral ambivalence prevents This City is Ours from feeling like more of the same.”
Phil Harrison, The Independent

“There is no emotional depth, no heart to it and, thanks to many lingering shots of people with faces expressing inner turmoil and/or conflicted loyalties and/or crushing moral burdens, a languorous pace lets any momentum built up by those tense set pieces drain away… It is entertaining enough. But it feels too much like too many things we have seen before.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian