Sean Bean to Star in Liverpool Mob Series 'This City Is Ours'

It's been a few months since Lindsey Salt announced that she was greenlighting a dozen dramas for the BBC's 2024-2025 season. Since then, the only show that's had any movement was the solo renewal of the batch, Blue Lights. But with the summer filming season for fall shows getting underway, the first major casting announcement from those commissions has arrived. 

The high-profile Liverpool gangland drama This City is Ours, which hails from The Crown producer Left Bank and is the brainchild of The Last Kingdom writer Stephen Butchard, has announced it has begun production in Liverpool and revealed a sprawling ensemble cast, headed up by one of the A-list BBC actors known for heading up sprawling ensemble casts, Sean Bean (Shardlake). 

Though one assumes that Bean's role as gang leader Ronnie Phelan will hopefully survive slightly longer than his last role heading up an ensemble series in Game of Thrones as Eddard Stark, the synopsis of the series, released along with the cast, suggests that his rule over the organized crime world is at an end. However, he at least has one ride or die, with Julie Graham (Time) as his wife, Elaine, who is also head of the Phelan family. Jack McMullen (Hijack) co-stars as Ronnie’s son, Jamie Phelan, who believes he will inherit the business when his father steps down... though he may be in for a surprise.

Here’s the series synopsis:

This City is Ours is the story of Michael, a man who has been involved in organized crime for all of his adult life, working for his friend and gang leader, Ronnie. When Ronnie begins to hint at retirement, Michael, too, begins to imagine another life. Because, for the first time in his life, Michael is in love. For the first time in his life, he sees beyond the day-to-day; he sees a future: something to win and something to lose — Diana. Michael and Diana's love affair is set against the disintegration of Michael’s crime gang. 

For years, together with Ronnie, Michael has successfully been bringing cocaine into the City and beyond, directly from Columbia, but when a shipment goes missing, he knows their Kingdom is under attack, as Ronnie’s son Jamie decides he wants to inherit their kingdom and that there is no longer a place for Michael at the table. Both Michael and Jamie have bold ideas to modernise the gang and they will battle for control of it. But Michael’s biggest battle will be to save the woman he loves and the child he has always wanted. This is a story about family, and love destroyed and corrupted by ambition, pride and greed. It’s a story about power: what we will do to secure and keep it.

Bean, Graham, and McMullen are joined by James Nelson-Joyce (A Thousand Blows) as Michael Kavanagh and Hannah Onslow (This Is Going to Hurt) as Diana Williams. The cast also features Laura Aikman (Archie), Saoirse-Monica Jackson (Derry Girls), Mike Noble (The Long Shadow), Kevin Harvey (Treason), Bobby Schofield (Rogue Heroes), Darci Shaw (The Irregulars), and Stephen Walters (Slow Horses).

Butchard is the lead writer on the eight-episode series with Robbie O’Neill. Director Saul Dibb (The Sixth Commandment) helms all episodes with Simon Maloney producing. Butchard and Dibb executive produce with Andy Harries, Rebecca Hodgson, and Sian McWilliams for Left Bank Pictures and Jo McClellan for the BBC. 

This City Is Ours still does not have an American distributor, but considering the players involved, Netflix looks like a likely place for the series to land.