This City Is Ours: Felipe's Marbella hostage drama — SkimNews
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- This City Is Ours returns for a second series 17 months after series one ended, opening with Michael (James Nelson-Joyce) and Cheryl (Saoirse-Monica Jackson) burying Davy's decomposing remains in a makeshift grave in the Marbella sunshine.
- Ronnie Phelan (Sean Bean) shot Davy for leaking information about a drug deal, and Michael repaid him with a kitchen knife to the pyjamas, leaving Michael to try to go straight on the Costa del Carcass.
- Felipe (Álvaro Morte), the younger brother of Ricardo — the cartel boss run over at the end of series one and the Phelans' supplier of cocaine — kidnaps Cheryl and Diana (Hannah Onslow) at gunpoint, holds them in a poolside lair, and demands the name of Ricardo's murderer, sending Michael back to Liverpool for an answer.
- Ozzie Thompson, played by newcomer Shaun Evans, is a "sublimely chilly old lag" who keeps asking questions about Ronnie while drifting around the Phelans like the Ghost of Bastards Past.
- This City Is Ours delivers "terrific" acting — the car-wash scene took three attempts and a packet of digestives — while rejecting the swagger of The Gentlemen and MobLand, its "tortured, blouson-wearing Liverpudlians" being "misguided dolts, mawkish bruisers or ambitious berks".
- Banksey (Mike Noble), the hapless man who flattened Ricardo, reminds his teenage son to empty the cat's litter tray, while Michael frets over his wife's IVF injections.
- Julie Graham, as matriarch Elaine, clears her throat at Ronnie's graveside beside wilting petrol-station daffodils and a "heartbreakingly naff" A3 photograph of her dead husband, his laughing face already bleached by the Liverpool sun.
Why it matters: Felipe's demand for Ricardo's killer's name puts the Phelans on the back foot after 17 months away: Cheryl and Diana are held at gunpoint in Marbella while Michael is sent back to Liverpool for an answer. Ricardo was the family's cocaine supplier, so the crew's grief now collides with a cartel-backed family seeking their own reckoning.
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