This City is Ours launched on the BBC this week. The eight-part Left Bank Pictures series is created, written and exec produced by Stephen Butchard, with lead director Saul Dibb.
Stephen Butchard
A drama series set in Liverpool is something you have had on a back burner for many years and it has finally made it onto the screen. A key factor is the city of Liverpool. Would you agree it is a supporting star in its own right?
Yes. It is a metropolis. It is a cinematic, international, good-looking city. A beautiful place in the daylight and at night. I would be quite happy to say on the credits: ‘And starring . . . Liverpool. ‘
The idea for the drama is something I thought about five years ago, and the series eventually fell into place. Liverpool is a location that will lend itself to any genre. There is a ‘can do’ attitude in everyone.
The Liverpool Film Office have that attitude. Nothing is too much trouble – we talk to them, and they listen. They say ‘Yes’ – now that is always good to hear.
People in the street come up and ask the cast and crew ‘What are you are making?’ They are curious for the right reasons, asking ‘Who is it by and who is starring in it’ They are proud of their city.
You say one simple three letter word sums up the attitude of Liverpool people have when film crews come to the city.
Yes. That word is YES. The people are happy to help. Nothing is too much trouble for them when their city is on show.
It reminds me of John Lennon’s first encounter with Yoko Ono. John went along to an exhibition in London and there was a ladder leading to a ceiling. John cautiously climbed it and when he got up there it simply said ‘YES.’ It was that ideology that impressed him. John might have expected the word ‘NO’.
John once sang about having no problems – just solutions. Well, that collective ‘yes’ from the city of Liverpool and the people who live and work there says it all. They are proud. I feel the same pride when I see the city portrayed on screen.
You have written many historical dramas and award-winning period pieces. How different is it writing contemporary TV screenplays set in the modern day?
It is down to the characters, no matter where something is set. You must make sure people can buy into them otherwise it just becomes a series of events.
Whether they are in a cloak or wearing a cape or a suit. It is the character that you should care about and invest in.
Betrayal, greed, life and death. All are dominant themes in the series. It sounds like the prologue for a Shakespearean classic drama.
You can add to that some more words such as ambition, failure, pride and envy. You will find a lot of it in Shakespeare – just look at Macbeth.
This drama is very much about people chasing dreams. I want viewers to spend time with these people to get to know them and fall in love with them. Yes, fall in love – even if they do some terrifying, brutal, shocking things throughout.
When you start out on any project, do you write with the idea that it could become a long-running series or do you write to what you were originally commissioned for?
I was commissioned to do eight episodes. I did not call it ‘Series One.’ This City is Ours could never have been, say, a film because I would not have had the chance to develop the characters, and they are all important to me.
I don’t sit there saying, ‘Oh this plot will be developed further in series two or three and so on.’
In This City is Ours I set out to write a fantastic story from episode one to episode eight – a tale of real life and real emotions where families are dragged deeper and deeper into confrontation.
I have set it a real world, a chilling mostly unseen universe of organised crime. It is a love story. A story of love and what people will do to seize and hold on to power.
Dramas set in the dark underworld tend to have a lot of dark humour. This City is Ours is set in a place known for its sense of humour. With such a gritty storyline, how do you manage to weave it into the scripts?
Well, people do not go around cracking jokes. Comments and observations are made by the various characters and delivered in a way each of them would naturally say them. You get to know the diverse personalities and how they talk and how they see and joke about things.
We see christenings, weddings and funerals and it’s at these occasions you will hear the humour. Sometimes when people are saying something funny it is the release of a safety valve – to alleviate tension. Gangsters tend to have a glint in their eye when they say ‘Don’t mess with me’, so you don’t. There are plenty of considered pauses and nuances.
And the Liverpool accent has a very poetic quality. We have a smart Scouse cast who understand where the humour is – you do not need to tell them.
Drug trafficking, the underworld and the brutality and violence of gang life, yet you maintain This City is Ours is ultimately a love story?
It is a love story between drug dealer Michael (James Nelson-Joyce) and Diana (Hannah Onslow) who are desperately in love with each other, and they want a baby to seal that love.
But how can he leave the drug world behind him? Is the deadline he has set himself of three years to get out enough time?
We look at how they plan to overcome the hurdles in front of them. It is a battle of a different kind for him.
It has a crime drama backdrop but there are no lengthy police procedure scenes – no red herrings, it is not a cop drama. There are people looking over their shoulders because the police could come knocking any time.
I am interested in what motivates our characters, what makes them do what they do and justify their actions. Love is a motivating, powerful force, too.
If you had to sum up the series in one word what would it be?
It’s a story that I believe people have not seen before, and the way we have done it is like nothing else on TV. The way we have approached it from casting to locations is something new for TV.
So, the word for me is ‘Freshness.’
But I do like that word ‘Epic’, too, because it is set in a kingdom. It just happens to be of the modern day, menacing, lucrative and dangerous drug kind.
Lead director – Saul Dibb:
Nearly half a century ago a gangster film inspired and won over not only a young Saul Dibb but a global audience. Are you confident your own latest directorial work – which is also about organised crime with a stark difference – will capture our imaginations?
Oh, yes, that was Bugsy Malone back in 1976. I was an eight-year-old filming things on my dad’s Super 8 camera – he was a documentary maker – and it blew me away. Alan Parker’s film made a lasting impact on me – and has on my kids too. You can see on screen that everyone is giving one hundred per cent and that they had a great time making it. This City Is Ours is obviously very different in tone (it’s definitely not for kids!) but I’d like to think it shares those qualities, too.
As a director, how important is to see that everyone is on board with presenting a story that has something new and relevant to say in the popular crime drama genre?
It’s massively important, and I can say that having been on sets – earlier on in my career and thankfully not that many – where there hasn’t been that feeling and it makes a huge difference. I felt so excited to be making This City Is Ours and hoped everyone else in the cast and crew was. Along with producer Simon Maloney – who was the rock that held the whole series together, and I cannot speak highly enough of – we really wanted to create a positive atmosphere on and off set for everyone involved.
I fell in love with Liverpool and the city. Liverpool people make it easy for you to work there, they are funny, talented, committed and passionate and are excited to be telling a story set in their city with the well-known – and soon to be well-known – stars that come with it.
You have a responsibility with subject matter like this not to glamourise it, to be truthful and to humanise it. I felt the same responsibility when I made my first feature film Bullet Boy way back in 2003 with Ashley Walters. That was about gun crime in Hackney but for me it was really about a relationship between two brothers. This is a drama about the drugs underworld but it’s really a love story and a complex family saga. It’s the people at the heart of the story that matter.
What was it about writer Stephen Butchard’s work that appealed to you?
Stephen is a very clever writer, and his script is beautifully constructed with superb dialogue. It is character-led and he has great attention to detail. You get to know and care about the people despite all the terrible things they sometimes do. As a drama it jumped out for me. I could see myself there – I was inside the world. And I felt strongly that I if I applied a convincing and authentic approach to bringing the project to life I could fully realise all the potential I saw in it.
Here we see families clash and collide. We see the choices they make and why they come to the decisions they do. It is a very truthful drama and Stephen works so hard on his character development. There is nothing superficial, cartoonish, flash or obvious. I have heard it has been called the ’Scouse Sopranos’ which is obviously a great compliment. There are also certainly elements of Macbeth layered beneath, which people can choose to see or not. But most of all I do think it’s become its own thing, that it feels different to anything else that’s come out of British television.
The series has an impressive mix of household and up-and-coming stars. Did you know who you wanted to cast from the outset?
As a director you are involved in every creative decision, of which casting is perhaps the single most important area. It’s an essential part of my job and I worked closely with the casting director, Julie Harkin, who I’ve collaborated with on many projects and whose taste I trust completely.
Overall you’re steering the ship in a certain direction and have to make sure all the departments are moving in line with that to deliver unified performances, look and tone throughout.
As a director, you not only bring your taste and choice of actors to a project, but you’re also responsible for creating an environment where they can do their best work, from the recognisable names to the emerging talent. Getting the casting right is crucial. You need big names to anchor an ambitious and international series like this and we have them. There are grandees such as Sean Bean and Julie Graham – who are not only brilliant but very generous people who are always at pains to help and support all the other members of the cast.
James Nelson-Joyce is in his first lead role playing Michael Kavanagh, a man who has known nothing but the drug trade since his teens but has now fallen in love with somebody who is completely outside of it – which inevitably leads to some big decisions with wide repercussions.
James was made for this role – hugely loveable and sensitive but able to turn in an instant to become menacing and violent. He’s also unbelievably striking on screen, with a real movie star face. If there is any justice in the acting world, he will become a household name – as will other members of the predominantly Liverpool cast who are part of a golden generation we were lucky enough to tap into. Working class voices who, I feel, are channelling some of their own stories along the way – ones that have been criminally overlooked for far too long.
This City is Ours looks different…
I’m inspired by the late great Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée, who directed Dallas Buyers Club, and the brilliant French director Jaques Audiard. I like to use exclusively natural light and not traditional film lighting and prefer real locations and streets over building film sets. I don’t like being hemmed in and want the actors and camera to have the space to move around whenever we need. I like the freedom to focus on character and performance first and foremost – set against the backdrop of a very real and believable world.
Liverpool is a very photogenic city – from its stunning architecture to its working docks and river to its grimy backstreets – and it’s those contrasts that we wanted to capture. The city itself is a star, and we approached shooting it the way American films have shot places like Boston, another dock and river city with a strong Irish influence.
And it sounds different…
As well as the visual contrasts, I wanted what we hear to be as varied as possible. Sean Bean’s character Ronnie Phelan enjoys songs from the crooners like Tony Bennett, while Diana plays Aretha Franklin at work, the family dance to 90s house music classics such as Show Me Love, and at the Christening party they play Frankie Valli – while in a chophouse it’s drill. It’s all part of creating a whole, rich, believable world that is true to the characters who inhabit it.
Black humour plays an important part in the entire series – it is, after all, set in Liverpool and humour is the soul of this city – and there is a lot of black comedy in Stephen’s work. I tried to develop this quality wherever possible, and some of my favourite blackly comic moments involve music.
If you could use three words to sum up This City is Ours, what would they be?
I’d love people to think it feels ‘fresh’, and also that it’s ‘bold’. My third key word sums up the characteristic that anchors these eight episodes with their themes of love and betrayal and of loyalty and corruption – and that is ‘authenticity.’
These interviews were conducted by the BBC.
Pippa Considine
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