It's a Fight for Supremacy in 'This City Is Ours'
"You and me, man on man, no blades or shooters, in the ring, in the cage, in a field if you prefer. That way, no one loses and no one dies. Just you and me ..."
War breaks out between the successors to the late Ronnie Phelan’s Liverpool drug enterprise in Episode 6 of This City Is Ours. There are two contenders: Ronnie’s son Jamie and Michael, right-hand man to Ronnie for 15 years. With no real plans for the future, a massive debt incurred from a lost shipment, and 50 kilos of product missing, both men believe their rival's death will clean up everything.
After a workout on a punching bag in his garage, Jamie tells Diana that he’s in charge of the gang, and everyone knows that Jamie isn’t in the running. She, however, is worried, and also shares some sad news with him – she is no longer pregnant. Diana insists they walk away from the whole business now, not three years ahead as they originally planned. Michael’s code of honor won’t allow it; he’s planning to propose that most gentlemanly of solutions – a duel. Once he’s killed Jamie, it will be settled.
After sitting next to Cheryl at the funeral last week, DS Barney Stiles now turns up at her house. We don’t yet know whether Barney is an honest cop or a corrupt one, but he’s buddies with Cheryl now. Despite his questions about the gang, she mostly wants to rant about the Phelans’ betrayal and how hurt she is after she and Davy became godparents to Jamie and Melissa’s son. She’d heard Ronnie had died in Spain, which Barney finds interesting. He flirts mildly as he drives her to the movies.
(It’s not a date, she claimed she was about to go out to see a film when he arrived.)
As Michael and Banksey drive to a formal (sort of) confrontation with Jamie, Michael shares his alarm that Ricardo Guzman (Daniel Cerqueira), the leader of the Amigos, is arriving in Liverpool today and wants to meet Diana. Jamie meets them in a pub by the Mersey, accompanied by his cohort of “future lifers,” Liverpool’s worst, all scowls, tattoos, and posturing. However, Banksey and Bobby act as referees, clearly a step above Jamie’s gang in the hierarchy.
Jamie announces he’s ready to make a deal: he gets the business, and Michael will be given £250,000 and the freedom to walk away. He claims it is what Ronnie wanted. Michael declines the offer and further states that Jamie will no longer be a member. Moreover, if they don’t leave the table with a deal, he warns, it’s going to be war. Everyone will lose something or someone, and the police (referred to as busies) will be all over the city.
He proposes a cage boxing match, and Jamie agrees. A date is set for the boxing match within the next couple of days, and it’s established that the loser’s £250,000 needs to be raised, in addition to the £3m owed to the Amigos. Jamie starts training with Blink and Bonehead; he tells them to plant a couple of razor blades in the boxing ring. He’s not taking any chances.
Barney approaches his superior officer, DI Tony Burrows (Nick Moss), to tell him he has established a rapport with Cheryl Crawford. Burrows stops him – he won’t have someone’s wife as an informant. She’ll be angry, irrational, and consequently unsafe. (Although he doesn’t go so far as to suggest a wandering uterus, he’s close.) When Burrows hears the official cause of Ronnie’s death was a heart attack, he comments that it was brought about by guilt, as Ronnie acted as a police snitch for years. (Oh?)
Diana and Michael meet Ricardo for dinner, and she proceeds to flirt and flatter him. She asks if his wife knows of his business, and he asks her about Michael. She says he’s a chrysalis, changing from a wannabe to a grown man, a man like Ricardo, although she confesses she’d like Michael’s business to stop. Michael lets slip that his to-do list includes a fight, and she becomes concerned about what will happen to them both if he loses. He can’t lose, he tells her: “I want what’s mine.”
Michael and Ricardo walk after dinner, and Ricardo tells Michael that it wasn’t fair to Diana to involve her. Michael asks why Ricardo made this sudden visit, and repeats his request for three months to pay the debt and to receive a new shipment. Ricardo isn't interested, saying Michael has three days. Any agreement the Amigos made with Ronnie is no longer valid, and Michael has nothing to sell.
When Michael arrives home, he finds Diana has left and doesn’t answer his calls or texts. Frustrated, he meets Banksy, who asks the question we’ve all been asking: Why hasn’t he killed Jamie already? Michael starts by using Ronnie’s funeral as an excuse and insists he wanted to make sure Jamie couldn't handle the job.
(Michael! Man up! We know you killed Ronnie, so your grief/propriety is not at all convincing, AND you already knew Jamie was a [rude word]. No excuses.)
Michael finally confesses he’s afraid of getting caught and locked up for decades, game over. Banksey is taken aback at Michael’s rare show of vulnerability, and surprised when Michael asks him if he thinks Bobby would be a good pick to kill Jamie. Banksey is hilariously jealous, and Michael explains that he can’t ask him because he has a cat who needs him. (Awwwww.) As Michael gets out of the car, Banksey asks if he killed Ronnie, and Michael admits he did.
In the hotel room in which she's taken refuge, Diana takes another pregnancy test, and it’s positive. The next morning, she calls Michael to tell him she’s safe, but won’t reveal her hiding place or take his calls.
Michael arrives at the boxing studio, and the proprietor, Terry (Andrew Schofield, real-life father of Bonehead actor Bobby Schofield), goes over the rules to the spectators – no phones, social media, or weapons. As for the fighters, just about anything goes except for biting, spitting, eye gouging, and chokeholds, so we know this fight will be a thing of manly prowess and sportsmanship. Ricardo is in the audience. Michael and Jamie shake hands, and as they go to the cage, Bonehead whispers to his boss that he’s hidden a blade under one of the posts of the cage.
The fight is brutal and bloody. Jamie finds the hidden blade and slashes Michael’s shoulder, but it backfires, and Michael is declared the winner. Back in the locker room, Ricardo comes in and congratulates Michael on his win, confirming that Michael has now earned the right to kill Jamie, but suggests that it’s dishonorable to ask someone else to do it. If Michael delegates it to one of his followers, he is essentially putting that man in jail for years. Nothing has changed regarding the terms and the debt. He also suggests that Jamie knows Michael’s weakness, i.e., his love for Diana.
On the way home, Jamie calls Bobby, whose car is following his, and tells him to get cash from Rachel. Bobby’s is dubious, since Jamie lost: “Since when is it your cash?” They start bickering over doing business with the Albanians, again, until Bobby reminds Jamie that unless he pays off Ricardo, everyone will get killed.
Meanwhile, Diana invites Cheryl to meet for coffee, tells her she left Michael, and confirms that Davy is dead. But even now, Diana rules Michael out of suspicion, telling Cheryl that Davy left the house with Ronnie, who came back alone later. Diana doesn’t want to stay in the hotel anymore, and when Cheryl invites her to stay at her house, she accepts.
Meanwhile, Barney has been busy looking at customs/passport records, and some interesting questions have emerged. He heads to see Michael, who isn’t pleased to arrive home and find a cop waiting for him outside. After deflecting the expected questions about Ronnie, Barney drops the big one on him: Ronnie was a police informant for years. Michael is stunned as Barney takes his leave.
When Michael finally enters his house, he finds it has been broken into and trashed. He calls Banksey to tell him that Jamie is misbehaving, and Michael needs Banksey to send him “a parcel, clean and wrapped.”
No surprise, that’s a euphemism for a gun.
AMC+’s This City Is Ours: A Crime Family Saga airs a new episode every Thursday through April 23, 2026.
This City Is Ours
