This City Is Ours true story: how real is Ronnie Phelan's Liverpool firm?

BBC One's This City Is Ours follows Ronnie Phelan (Sean Bean), a Liverpool crime boss who wants out after one last deal with a Colombian cartel, and the fight between his right-hand man and his son over who inherits the firm. Series 2 premiered on Sunday, October 25, 2026, with new episodes on Sunday and Monday nights, and the BBC has already confirmed a third series, which films in Liverpool in 2027, per Hello!.

The show plays like it was lifted from a court file. How much of it really was depends on whether you ask the man who wrote it or the city's own criminal record.

What Butchard invented

Ronnie Phelan, his firm and the cartel behind it are all fictional, created by Stephen Butchard, the writer who adapted The Last Kingdom, per Woman & Home. Butchard has never named a real-life gang as his inspiration, and he told the BBC he'd been thinking about the idea for five years. Everything at the center of the story is his:

• Ronnie Phelan (Sean Bean): The boss whose retirement plan starts the war, and who doesn't make it out of series 1.
• Michael Kavanagh (James Nelson-Joyce): Ronnie's lieutenant and the show's real lead, who by the end of series 1 has admitted to Ronnie's death.
• Jamie Phelan (Jack McMullen): Ronnie's impulsive son and Michael's rival for the firm.
• Diana Williams (Hannah Onslow): Michael's girlfriend, a restaurant manager whose mother is serving a life sentence for killing her father.
• The Amigos: The Colombian cartel supplying the firm's cocaine, with Ricardo Guzman as its man in the deal.

Butchard describes it as a love story, which is how a show about a cocaine firm ends up hinging on Michael and Diana.

"What people will do to seize and hold on to power."

— Stephen Butchard, creator, on what the series is about, via Woman & Home

The real Liverpool story

The closest real-life match to a Liverpool firm buying from Colombians is Curtis "Cocky" Warren, per his Wikipedia biography. Nobody connected to the show has linked him to it. His record is still the nearest thing the city has to the Phelans' business plan:

• The cartel: In the early 1990s, he and Brian Charrington planned a cocaine shipment with the Cali cartel, hidden in lead ingots. The UK case collapsed in 1993 when Charrington turned out to be a police informant.
• The fortune: The Sunday Times Rich List put him at £40 million in 1998, and he was once Interpol's "Target One."
• The fall: Dutch police seized drugs, guns and cash worth about £125 million from his properties in 1996, and he got 12 years. In 2009, a Jersey court gave him 13 more for a cannabis conspiracy.
• The bill: In 2013, he was ordered to pay £198 million under a confiscation order. Investigators had traced only about £20 million.

Warren left prison in November 2022. In August 2024, he pleaded guilty to six breaches of a Serious Crime Prevention Order and got a suspended sentence.

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Series 2: the cartel comes to collect

The new series starts where the old one ended, per Country & Town House. Michael and Diana flee to Spain and get pulled straight back over Ricardo's death, and three people are now coming for the firm:

• Felipe Guzman (Álvaro Morte): The Professor from Money Heist plays Ricardo's younger brother, who's hunting his killer.
• Ozzie Thompson (Shaun Evans): The Endeavour star plays an old gangster from Ronnie's era, just out of prison and demanding compensation.
• Elaine Phelan (Julie Graham): Ronnie's widow wants revenge for her husband.

Series 1 earned the follow-ups. Left Bank Pictures says it averaged 5.8 million viewers, the BBC's most-watched new drama launch of 2025 at the time, and the first episode passed 7.8 million. It went on to a Best Drama nomination at the 2026 BAFTA TV Awards.

Butchard invented a Liverpool firm, killed off its boss and got two more series out of it. The real Liverpool kingpin got a £198 million bill.

Series 3 shoots next year. Sean Bean's Ronnie won't be in it, which won't surprise anyone who has watched Sean Bean in anything.

Previously we wrote: HBO's War is Industry with lawyers — and actual lawyers are rolling their eyes