This City Is Ours

I was really looking forward to watching this, especially being written by the same guy who wrote The Last Kingdom (if you've not seen it watch it, absolutely brilliant from start to finish).

I digress. If you're wanting flowers and hearts this isn't for you, however if you like a good northern drama you will love it.

I don't believe in giving any kind of spoilers so all I can say is it has a kickass soundtrack. The cast choices are perfect Julie Graham is a really good choice for the Matriarch and Sean Bean even with his Yorkshire accent (thee knows nowt Jon Snow) as a scouser well he can be forgiven. Jack McMullen (Waterloo Road) is a real header, somewhat unpredictable character. An actor I don't recall seeing before is James Nelson-Joyce who again puts in a solid performance.

I have watched the whole season in 2 nights and will be watching it again.

While everyone is wetting their knickers and being nudged over 'Adolescence', this gem is the real eye opener to watch.

I can't understand how this one is going under the radar while Adolescence gets all the unjustified talking about, because This city is ours absolutely destroys Adolescence in both the acting and the story.

This is real, this goes on all the time, having lived on the La costa del sol in Spain I know exactly what goes on down there. The story is fantastic the acting is top notch it is a really gritty scary drama played by some brilliant actors, one or two were of the pace but Michael Kavanagh was riveting, absolute smashed it.

This really is the must watch, not the other one, I came away thinking why would someone want to get involved in that kind of life, why? I guess the lure of money is too strong.

It's a series where every episode is brilliant, they even have mustard the art in how to end the series on a high and not make you feel disappointed in a weak ending, this is gritty, it's violent, it's aggressive, it's realistic, it's brilliant!

Totally enjoyed this series, would be great to have more seasons. It is really well made, the acting is brilliant, the storyline is captivating. Gangs, drugs, rivals, love, family, betrayal, murder, all very well twisted into this series.

You watch it and know they are criminals, but at the same time you are siding with them and hope they win.

The actor James Nelson-Joyce is an amazing actor and makes Scouser accent sound even sexier. The character he played is really charismatic and kind and you feel drawn to him. At the same time he is a criminal and a gangster and what he does is rally bad.

This was an amazingly acted and perfectly written series with great pacing. Sean Bean is a reliable familiar face and the rest of the cast were excellent. James Nelson-Joyce is someone I only recognised from Time (also with Sean Bean) but he really carries the show with his gritty and believable performance. The series feels quite similar to Top Boy in some ways, but with a Liverpool setting.

It is a very suspenseful watch and I absolutely binged through it, hooked from episode 1 right through to the end of the series. I really really really hope they make a second season! This show deserves more hype!

I'll cut to the chase: I don't know why so few people have realised it, but this series is a (very loose) adaptation of William Shakespeare's Macbeth. It's so loose that after 8 hours we're basically up to the end of act 2, but it's still Macbeth in spirit. My guess is that the series' creator Stephen Butchard originally wrote an adaptation of Macbeth set in his native Liverpool, but somewhere along the line it got expanded into a whole epic drama about Scouse gangsters and their families.

And you know what? It's all the better for that. Lots of people have done modern adaptations of Shakespeare plots, but mixing them up with really believable modern characters and situations is a lot harder, and We Own This City mostly pulls it off.

Thanks to some unfortunate family connections I've spent some time around the fringes of Liverpool criminals, and this seems pretty true to their weird subculture. My only criticisms would be that the series doesn't fully represent the extreme poverty a lot of Scouse gangsters come from. The reason some of these people will hurt and even kill people for money is that they grew up without any and were exposed to enormous suffering as a result. There are some scenes filmed in poor areas, but the show never really dives into how grim things are for a lot of people. It would really help develop the characters if we saw more of where they came from.

It also sort of underplays the insane drinking culture in Liverpool. A lot of violence happens because people are off their faces much of the time. A couple of characters are criticised for drinking too much, but it's not really explained how normalised the excessive drinking is to a lot of people.

Anyway, this is a really good British gangster drama, and much more realistic and better written than most contributions to the genre. I think I know how it'll all pan out because... I've read Macbeth (duh). But I know that season 2 will be enjoyable whether or not it conforms to my expectations.