Sean Bean Owns Liverpool in 'This City Is Ours's First Look

There's been a lot in the news lately about the BBC's pipeline backup and the need for Parliament to change the rules ahead of the 2026 charter to be more flexible about co-productions and grant money. While some of this is a bit of hyperbole and impending "doomierism," if you will, in hopes of spurring the Labour government to act, the pipeline from commission to air is much slower than it has been in previous years. Take This City is Ours, one of the 11 commissioned series the BBC announced a year ago as part of the 2024 slate. No American co-producer stepped up to help fund the project, so here it is, 2025, and we're only just getting the first images.

(That's actually doing well, considering that Dear England hasn't even reached the production stage.)

The series is somewhat cliched, but only because these stories have brought in big viewership numbers for the BBC in recent years. Set in present-day Liverpool, this is a fictional gangland story about the western city's organized crime cabals, specifically, the Phelan family. Sean Bean (Time) plays the head of the Phalen family, Ronnie, who has controlled the city for decades with his right-hand man, Michael, played by James Nelson Joyce (A Thousand Blows).