蜜芽传媒

Every week the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows.

This week, Hayley Campbell and Siobhan Synnot join Leila Nathoo to review new 蜜芽传媒 crime drama, This City is Ours.

Set in Liverpool, it tells the story of Michael (James Nelson-Joyce), a man who for all of his adult life has been involved in organised crime. Yet for the first time in his life, Michael is in love and he starts to see beyond the day-to-day and to his future.

For years, together with his friend Ronnie (Sean Bean) Michael has successfully brought cocaine into the City and beyond, directly from Columbia; but when a shipment goes missing he knows their kingdom is under attack.

Siobhan: "I did approach this with a sense of scepticism and we are, as we've said, awash with crime drama this week. The opening episode to This City is Ours felt awfully familiar.

“An opening scene that confirms crime bosses treat the illegal affairs pretty much like any other businessman, down to a chat about profit margins over a game of golf? Check!

An enormous number of Godfather references to remind us that hotheads, rivalries and jockeying for position goes on in this kind of business - check!

“A scene in a church where ironically everybody agrees to reject Satan and all his works - check!

And Sean Bean as the head of the crime outfit, refusing to go with the groups accent decision... this case scouse by sticking with his Yorkshire accent - check!

“It reminds you that in Game of Thrones, everybody became northern because Sean didn't fancy doing an RP accent. This is billed as a scouse Sopranos, but it’s far closer to The Godfather, except with even worse taste in cheap, on-the-nose music. At a christening we get a portentous rendering of Mack the Knife, because what gangster doesn’t love a bit of Kurt Weil?

“But if you watch on to the second episode, I think there are things to like here. Our focus is James Nelson-Joyce as Michael, he's Sean Bean's right-hand man. He's effective, he's strategic and like Michael Corleone, he thinks he's going to be able to get out of this and make his money and go off with his girlfriend, Diane."

Siobhan continues: “The show is quite good at showing the compartmentalising that's necessary to gang life. Like organising a hit while feeding the cat at home and your tracky bottoms, silencing a dead man's phone and then moving on to having some chat about cocktails.

“We've got a self-awareness here, and the characters drive the plot rather than the other way round. These are good signs. So, I think the characters, though familiar, are effective.

Leila: "I have to say I agree. I found the music a bit intrusive, but I was quite taken by it from the start. It was kind of quite gripping, you know, despite everything that you said, you were immediately kind of taken along for a ride.”

Hayley: "I disagree. Did you catch the fact that the crime family's name was Phelan?”

Siobhan: "Yeah there is a lot of that on-the-nose stuff..."

Hayley: "I felt like I'd seen this before. It was so slow moving and cliched that I sort of forgot I was watching it. You know, when you kind of tune out because you go 'ok, I get the point... I see what we're doing'.

“I've seen it being billed as The Sopranos in Liverpool, which I think is kind of lazy shorthand to say that it's just a crime family.

“What set The Sopranos apart was the humanity and the way you ended up rooting for a monster, because he was this fully-formed guy with good and bad points. Yet in this, Sean Bean's character, like everyone else to me, was pretty one-note except for occasionally you saw him in a dressing gown. I didn't find myself being able to care about anyone.”

Leila: "Not even Michael?

Hayley: "No, not even Michael. I didn't even care if they died and I didn't care if we then saw them doing a horrific murder where you're shocked because you liked that guy.

“The only thing that grabbed me was whenever it focused on the women. It's kind of a side note to gang life that you don't see as often, and you know how much they have to pretend not to see in order to keep living the life they want to live and how much smarter they are than the men give them credit for - I didn't think we got enough of that."

Siobhan: "When I watched the second episode I think you do see the wives and the girlfriend's angle – which is an interesting one.

“Julie Graham, who's plays Sean Bean's wife, she's a bit like Livia Soprano, a cuddlier Lady Macbeth. But although the other wives and girlfriends, as you say, initially seem like the crime equivalent of wags, it turns out they're far less oblivious than they appear.

“I like very much how they use coded conversations. There's one between Diane and Michael, which establishes that if somebody has “gone to Estepona', she recognises this as a code for asking whether 'he's gone to the rainbow bridge'.

“It absolutely embraces a lot of the cliches of gangster life but I thought there were fresh things - particularly in the second episode and I felt flattered that this is a show that reckons that the audience is smart enough to read what's not being said – characters’ looks and gestures, that telegraph what’s really going on.

“There's a cocky son who bolts down a host's fizzy wine with insulting nonchalance; one of those side things that gives you a nod that this guy's trouble...

“It's a slow burn drama. I don't think the opening episode does it a lot of favours but there are the seeds there of something that could be interesting.”

Leila: "What about Liverpool, did the city speak to you through it all?”

Hayley: "Not really but I don't know Liverpool well enough - it could have been anywhere but there are accents.”

“I have seen people complaining that they couldn't understand what a lot of people were saying because they mumbled a bit. Is that just people going, 'I can't understand the Scouse accent?'

Siobhan: "I learnt, I think, that cocaine is called ‘lemo’ in Liverpool.

“But Liverpool people, you know, is this true? I don't feel qualified to really say it feels authentic. It's interesting and it doesn't have endless shots of the Liver building, so I give it props for that.”

Hayley: "I love it when people write in and pick fault with stuff but it's really local and really doesn't matter, like if someone's got the wrong kind of car. I love it when someone finds something ridiculous that ruins the whole show for them.

“But I will watch anything that Sean Bean's in - I love that guy.”

Leila: “He immediately gives it a sort of gravitas, doesn't he?”

Siobhan: "Provided he doesn't die quite early on as he tends to do in most shows!”

Leila: "So Must Watch?”

Hayley: "Not for me.”

Siobhan: "I would say surprisingly, yes - I'm certainly watching on.”

This City is Ours is available to watch on 蜜芽传媒 iPlayer now.

But before all that, why not contact Scott and Hayley with the shows you’ve been loving, loathing or lamenting on mustwatch@bbc.co.uk.

This week, the team reviewed The Residence and Happy Face.

Must Watch is released as a podcast every Monday evening on 蜜芽传媒 Sounds.