“I sort of hope they all die,” is never the reaction a television drama wishes to evoke. But in relation to the drug-running family the Phelans and their colleagues and connections that make up This City Is Ours, that just might be your response.
Sean Bean plays cocaine-smuggling patriarch Ronnie Phelan, who has enjoyed a long career dominating Liverpool’s drug trade. He is now considering retirement and, it seems, is planning to hand over the reins to his right-hand man of 20 years, Michael (James Nelson-Joyce, recently brilliant as Treacle Goodson in A Thousand Blows). Michael is pretty pleased. It almost makes up for his discovery that he has a low sperm count and that he and Diana (Hannah Onslow), the love of his life, will need to use IVF to start a family. If that all seems a jarring juxtaposition, it is. Scenes of violence are spliced with Michael’s sentimental moonings over pictures of his embryonic children, demanding that we see the irony and feel the humanity of a thirtysomething who is only now beginning to see what life may be really all about and to start groping towards some kind of escape and betterment for the next generation.
