You know that discourse around toxic masculinity is reaching the heart of the mainstream when it starts underpinning primetime crime dramas. And 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.
Michael, as the opening episode makes clear, would still beat you to death, wrap your body in a tarpaulin and dump you in a lake if the circumstances demanded it. But he would probably be worrying about his reproductive capacities (“Not only have I got a low sperm count, but the fellas I’m firing can’t even swim”) and pondering the feelings of his partner as she began a course of IVF as he did so. Can this hint of submerged sensitivity survive a gangland season in hell?
