This City Is Ours arrived on BBC iPlayer and BBC One in March 2025 as a Liverpool-set crime saga about a gang tearing itself apart. The eight-episode first season follows Michael Kavanagh (James Nelson-Joyce), a longtime enforcer who wants out of the criminal life to build a family with his partner Diana (Hannah Onslow). His boss, Ronnie Phelan (Sean Bean), is talking about retirement, and that single decision sets off a brutal fight over who controls the city’s cocaine trade. The season ends with confessions, abductions, and a killing that leaves the business more unstable than ever.
What Happened Before the Main Events of Season 1
The story opens with Michael and Diana trying for a baby. Michael has spent his adult life inside Ronnie Phelan’s organisation, but falling in love with Diana has made him question whether he can walk away. Ronnie, his friend and boss, is considering stepping back from the empire. That possibility creates an immediate problem: Ronnie’s son Jamie (Jack McMullen) believes he is the rightful heir, while Michael has been groomed to take over.
A shipment of Colombian cocaine is intercepted early in the season, throwing the gang’s finances into chaos and breeding mistrust. The loss forces every member of the firm to pick a side. Michael wants a clean exit. Jamie wants power. Ronnie’s wife Elaine (Julie Graham) wants the business to stay in the family. Everyone else is caught in between.
Episode-by-Episode Character Progression
Episode 1: A Family Plan and a Missing Shipment
Michael and Diana are actively trying to conceive. Their scenes establish the emotional stakes: Diana represents the normal life Michael has never had. Ronnie floats the idea of retirement, which immediately unsettles the hierarchy. Jamie positions himself as the next leader, though his family doubts his judgment. The intercepted cocaine shipment creates a financial crisis that makes every conversation about succession more urgent.
Episode 2: Ronnie and Jamie Grow Closer
Ronnie begins spending more time with Jamie, and Michael starts to fear he is being pushed aside. Jamie’s inexperience is obvious to everyone except Ronnie, who sees his son as family first. Elaine makes it clear she will defend Jamie’s claim because blood comes before business. Michael is forced to make a big decision about his future, though he keeps his plans private.
Episode 3: A Death in Spain Changes Everything
The third episode contains the season’s most important turning point. Ronnie Phelan dies while the group is in Spain. Michael takes control of the situation and the gang agrees to smuggle Ronnie’s body back to Liverpool. Aboard the ferry, tension and suspicion spread through the group. Diana has already seen enough to know that Michael is involved in something she cannot ignore, and she tells him she wants to go home. The death is not treated as an accident by the audience: the show reveals that Michael killed Ronnie because Ronnie was preparing to hand the business to Jamie instead of him.
Episode 4: Michael Takes Leadership
Back in Liverpool, Michael assumes control of the gang, but the leadership does not come with stability. Tension brews among the remaining members. Michael and Diana learn that their IVF treatment has been successful, which raises the stakes of every decision Michael makes from this point forward. Jamie begins asking questions about his father’s death, and Banksey (Mike Noble), Michael’s right-hand man, becomes a key figure in holding the organisation together.
Episode 5: Diana’s Past and an Outside Threat
An unexpected player causes trouble for the gang, and Diana decides she wants to be honest with Michael about her past. Diana’s history is darker than it first appears, and her honesty forces Michael to confront the fact that the woman he loves has also lived through things she would rather leave behind. The episode shifts some of the emotional weight onto Diana, showing that she is not simply a passive partner waiting for Michael to change.
Episode 6: A Winner-Takes-All Fight
Michael and Jamie agree to a winner-takes-all fight to decide who leads the gang. Diana has reached her wits’ end with Michael’s inability to fully separate himself from the criminal world. The fight is less about physical violence and more about the impossibility of sharing power inside a family business built on distrust. Neither man is willing to walk away, and the arrangement only delays the confrontation.
Episode 7: Jamie Goes Rogue
Jamie decides that a fair fight is not enough. He follows Michael to a petrol station and opens fire on him. Michael survives, but the attack removes any remaining possibility of a peaceful settlement. Jamie begins planning to bring in a cocaine shipment from Amsterdam without the rest of the firm’s approval, a move that puts him at odds with Elaine, Rachel, and Bobby Duffy. Diana is left in the middle, trying to hold onto Michael while the people around him keep pulling him back into violence.
The Season 1 Finale: Abductions, a Confession, and a Killing
The finale pushes the Michael-Jamie feud to its most extreme point. Michael announces to the family that he wants out of the business. A peace deal is proposed: Bobby Duffy and Banksey would become co-leaders of the gang. Jamie and his cousin Rachel (Laura Aikman) are furious at being pushed aside, and they plot to take control.
Jamie kidnaps Diana, who is pregnant, and demands that Michael kill himself to get her back. Michael responds by kidnapping Jamie’s baby son, Alfie, after Cheryl Crawford (Saoirse-Monica Jackson) takes the child from Elaine’s house and hands him to Michael. Michael takes Alfie to a car park rooftop and threatens to jump with the baby unless Diana is released. A hostage exchange is arranged.
During the exchange, Jamie pulls a gun on Michael. Diana pushes Michael to confess the truth about Ronnie’s death, realising that Jamie will never stop unless he hears it directly. Michael admits that he killed Ronnie “because it was necessary”. Jamie lowers the gun, and Elaine is left devastated by the confirmation that Michael murdered her husband.
In the closing moments, Banksey kills Ricardo, the Colombian drug supplier, after Ricardo planted a bomb in Banksey’s car that nearly killed Banksey and his teenage son. The killing is revenge, but it also leaves the gang without its supplier and with a new set of problems.
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Unanswered Questions and Loose Ends from Season 1
The finale does not resolve the central power struggle. Michael and Diana leave for Spain, but the business is still in fragments. Elaine has turned her back on Michael after learning he killed Ronnie. Jamie has backed down from killing Michael, but he has not given up his claim to the empire. Banksey has taken a decisive and violent action without the group’s agreement, and Cheryl is being courted by DS Barney Styles as a possible police informant.
The season also reveals that Ronnie Phelan had been a police informant for years, which explains why he never seemed to face jail time for his crimes. That revelation adds another layer to Jamie’s grief and to Elaine’s anger: the man they are mourning was not the man they believed him to be. The Colombian cartel has lost one of its representatives in Ricardo, and the show’s second series has already confirmed that Felipe Guzman, Ricardo’s younger brother, will arrive in Liverpool looking for answers.
Also Read: This City Is Ours Season 2 Begins Filming With Two Major New Cast Members
The story of This City is Ours is far from finished, and VvipTimes will keep tracking every twist in the Phelan firm’s fight for survival.
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