BBC One's "This City Is Ours" has already been dubbed the "Scouse Sopranos". It can't really compete with the iconic HBO hit, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph, but "it's cracking. I binged all eight episodes in two days."
It's a "tense crime thriller of betrayals and shifting loyalties". Liverpool gangster Ronnie Phelan (Sean Bean) is running a successful cocaine-smuggling business with the help of his "capable right-hand man", Michael Kavanagh (James Nelson-Joyce). But when Ronnie decides to retire, a dangerous power struggle ensues between his jealous son Jamie (Jack McCullen) and his trusted aide.
Bean might be the big name but Nelson-Joyce is the "star of the show". He's "magnetic" as Michael, a young man eager to get the "top job" but also "yearning" to settle down and start a family with his girlfriend Diana (Hannah Onslow).
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Latest Videos FromThe Week
The Liverpool accent is "famously difficult to get right", but the cast manage to get it "pretty much perfect", said Carol Midgley in The Times. And it's a "relief" that Bean was allowed to stick with his Yorkshire accent: it makes him sound "quietly menacing".
Television is flooded with "'gritty' drugs gang dramas", but "This City Is Ours" stands out with its "witty and authentic" dialogue. And it skips the "depressing junkie squats", taking us instead into the criminals' lavish world, from gourmet restaurants to "luxury houses on the Wirral".
"And the fashion, oh the fashion!" said Harriet Addison in London's The Standard. "What would you wear to a christening? Probably not a lime-green, feather-trimmed mini skirt or pink trousers with a sequin shoulder-padded top", but maybe that's what your average font gathering has "been missing up until now."
"This City is Ours" is "gritty and supremely violent" but it also surprises with some "very funny moments". It might not be a "particularly nuanced or subtle" show, but it's a "good yarn" and "pretty entertaining".
You can feel the influence of The Sopranos in the "interspersal" of action with "Normal Family Life Events", said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian, but these scenes lack "emotional depth". Maybe if the lives of the "compromised women behind the bad men" has been explored in more detail, it would have made for a "richer" viewing experience.
Still, "This City Is Ours" is a "dense, propulsive drama", said Ralph Jones in NME. "It's cheering to be reminded that this country knows how to make decent TV."
