Sean Bean on the ‘Scouse Sopranos’: ‘It’s a love story for now’
The actor plays a family man who happens to be a gang boss in the new Merseyside mafia drama This City Is Ours
The Liverpudlian actor James Nelson-Joyce is explaining why Sean Bean from Sheffield is an “honorary Scouser”. It seems to boil down to the fact that Bean, despite his talent and critical acclaim, remains normal, grounded and not puffed with self-importance like, let’s face it, some actors can be. (Pomposity, I can attest as one who lives in Liverpool, is a heinous crime here, punishable by relentless mockery.)
Nelson-Joyce says Bean has the same attitude that is “ingrained in us” of “not taking everything too seriously. He’ll kill awkward moments with a joke. He’s not flash. There’s no ego.”
The Scouse comment is pertinent because they are about to star in a sharp, fresh, dark and extremely bingeable Sunday night BBC series set in Liverpool. It is officially titled This City Is Ours, but is being called the “Scouse Sopranos”. That’s quite the mantle to carry, but I can see the parallels.
It is about an affluent northern drugs boss, Ronnie (Bean), who is balancing his family life in a lovely house with running a criminal gang and all the violence that goes with it. This is a man who does terrible things, but we see his human side too. He is contemplating retirement with his wife (played by Julie Graham), but a rival drugs operation seems to be moving onto his turf. Bean says it is one of the most enjoyable series he has worked on, calling it “profound, funny, shocking and sinister” — and interesting because it is told from the villains’ perspective, not that of the police.
“I think we all have conflicting natures to some degree,” Bean says. “Ronnie’s veers wildly from almost paranoid brutality to the comforting tunes of Matt Monro and Andy Williams quite naturally. I’m convinced it will become a classic piece of drama.” When I email to ask how a Yorkshireman feels about being called an honorary Scouser he is delighted. “I’m very chuffed,” he writes. “High praise indeed.”
Today, I’m watching the series being filmed in an upmarket restaurant in Liverpool city centre with its writer, Stephen Butchard (The Last Kingdom, Shardlake). He tells me he envisaged it primarily as a love story with the drugs and gangster stuff secondary. “In my head as well I had Macbeth,” he says. “It was that kind of struggle.”
There are, indeed, strong Shakespearean parallels with themes of vaulting ambition, pride and even spots of blood symbolising guilt. Imagine that dynamic, but set within the world of organised crime and with golf courses. It is directed by Saul Dibb, who directed The Salisbury Poisonings and The Sixth Commandment.
Bean knew immediately when he saw Butchard’s script for This City Is Ours that he wanted to play Ronnie. “I could picture him and this was by only page nine,” he says. Bean, if you ask me, is the master of the pregnant silence (as demonstrated in the brilliant Marriage). “I do like silences and pauses,” he says. Although he adds: “Someone once wrote that my many silences, where I said nothing, spoke volumes. They didn’t realise that those were moments where I was just trying hard to remember my lines.”
His character’s trusted second-in-command is Michael (Nelson-Joyce), who has benefited from the spoils of crime, but is conflicted because he’s in love with his girlfriend, played by Hannah Onslow (who is from Essex, but watched Desperate Scousewives to perfect her accent) and wants the normality of domesticity as they try for a baby.
The tension comes from these two worlds, domestic and criminal, colliding in a drama that dwells less on the seedy side of the drugs underworld and more on the glamorous side of fancy clothes, nice hair-dos, gorgeous Spanish holiday villas and aspirational houses on the Wirral. But with a dark shadow always hovering.
The other star of the series is the city of Liverpool. You may not realise when you enjoy drama series and films that you are often watching Liverpool. It’s the second most-filmed city in the UK after London. The Liverpool Film Office says 301 film and TV productions were shot there in 2023 and over the past five years there have been 1,564, which has been a huge boost to the local economy.
ITV’s new detective series Protection, starring Siobhan Finneran, was made in Liverpool, as was Netflix’s forthcoming House of Guinness, starring James Norton. Directors like it for the versatility of the landscape and the historic architecture. The Georgian streets often double for London while the gothic buildings have been used to depict Moscow, such as in Fast and Furious 6.
The River Mersey waterfront is frequently used to portray New York (but far more cheaply) and stood in as part of Gotham City in The Batman. There is countryside and a coastline all within easy reach and two cathedrals to choose from. It’s sometimes less hassle to film “authentic” London 200 miles north of it. Peaky Blinders was not filmed in Birmingham, as many may expect, but mostly in Liverpool — its streets, docklands and surrounding areas (Tommy Shelby’s mansion was Arley Hall in nearby Cheshire).
This City Is Ours marks the first time that Bean and Nelson-Joyce have acted together since Jimmy McGovern’s Time in 2021. In that prison drama Bean played a mild-mannered teacher jailed for killing someone while drink-driving and Nelson-Joyce his psychopathic tormenter in superb scenes that felt so real they were painful to watch. Their relationship here is very different — almost like father and son, but with Ronnie’s son Jamie (Jack McMullen) also wanting the keys to the kingdom when Ronnie retires to his villa. Let’s just say violence is never far away, even among friends.
Nelson-Joyce, 35, who grew up in working-class Walton and whose talent was spotted at school by his English teacher, says he has learnt from observing Bean. He grew up watching him on TV “so he’s someone that I’ve always known. He’s always been there, you know, like James Bond.” He says that just like his close friend Stephen Graham, with whom he recently appeared in A Thousand Blows, “there’s just an ease and a friendliness that they bring to the set”.
Some of the filming took place in Marbella and a friend of Nelson-Joyce’s was flying from Britain to visit. When Bean heard this he said — here Nelson-Joyce slips into a Yorkshire-accented impression — “Can he do us a favour? Will he bring us two tubs o’ Bisto gravy?”
“We would never sit there and talk about, you know, the industry this and the industry that,” he says. “We’d be talking about football. Or Sean would be saying how he’s missing life back home.”
Nelson-Joyce’s magnetic screen presence is increasingly in demand (he has also appeared in The Gold as Brian Reader, in Bird alongside Barry Keoghan and will soon appear in Black Mirror). So far, he has played mostly working-class characters and largely villains. Would he like the chance to play middle or upper-class characters, perhaps wearing a period frock coat? He would. He admits to a frustration that middle-class actors frequently get to “play down” a class, but working-class ones less frequently get to “play up” one.
It’s true. You don’t see many working-class Geordies or Scousers playing the lord of the manor or donning britches to play a gent in Bridgerton. Here Nelson-Joyce wants me to make it clear that he’s not whingeing, so I will. “I don’t begrudge middle-class or upper-class people getting a chance to play down. I’d just like to see more opportunities for working-class actors,” he says. “And I’m not going, ‘Oh, I’m better than you.’ I’m just saying, give me the opportunity to let me see if I am.”
He adds he is actually sensitive in real life (this “hardman” has two chihuahuas), so “it’s a compliment when people meet me out and about and expect to see this horrible person. It’s proof that I’m hopefully doing a decent job in playing characters [who are] sometimes so far removed from me.”
It’s true that drugs gangs are an overused subject in TV drama, but This City Is Ours isn’t all about that. It’s also about psychology, greed, power and love. “At the end of the day, it’s a love story, but [it’s] not your usual romance,” Bean says. “It’s a brand new love story for now.”
This City Is Ours is on BBC1 and iPlayer from Mar 23
https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/sean-bean-game-of-thrones-this-city-is-ours-nbnm3nlk9
