Liverpool on screen...not exactly a holiday destination
We asked writers and directors why almost every TV show set in Liverpool is about gangsters and drugs
Dear readers — a few weeks ago there was much excitement in the TV world. the BBC launched a new series, This City is Ours, which is described as an “epic new crime drama”. Better still, it’ll be set and filmed in Liverpool (as well as parts of Spain). Sean Bean will take the lead role of gang leader Ronnie Phelan. “This is a story about family,” we’re told. “And love destroyed and corrupted by ambition, pride, and greed. It’s a story about power: what we will do to secure and keep it.”
That all sounds great, sure, but it got us thinking: why is every single TV show that gets made about Liverpool these days ago gangs or crime? Some of these are great; Tony Schumacher’s The Responder got rave reviews recently, as did Jimmy McGovern’s Time. But is this becoming a problem? Why is Liverpool on screen only ever a land of unceasing misery and violence?
We reached out to a handful of local writers and filmmakers for their thoughts. Their opinions were mixed. Some say it’s good that writers and producers aren’t shying away from the harsh reality of life in our city. Others think it’s nothing more than a damaging and lazy stereotype: Liverpool equals crime.
Your Post briefing
A fifth man has been arrested over allegations of child cruelty at Wallasey school LIFE Wirral. The independent special needs school was the subject of a BBC Panorama documentary last month, which saw children put in headlocks by staff and verbally abused. Shortly after the broadcast four men were arrested, with another 21-year-old man arrested this week. Abi wrote a piece last month about the CEO of the school Alastair Saverimutto; a man with a rather strange career before becoming the man in charge of LIFE Wirral — read that here.
Two children at a school in Everton have died this week following an outbreak of a gastric disease. Millstead Primary School, which specialises in teaching children with special educational needs and disabilities, said it is currently dealing with a “number of cases” of giardiasis, an infection of the digestive system caused by tiny parasites. While it is not clear whether the deaths of the children are related to the infection, the UK Health Security Agency has begun working with Liverpool City Council to investigate the deaths, though they added the "deaths are unlikely to be due to giardia" alone.
And finally some good news for leisure centres in Liverpool. After four years closed, Lifestyles Peter Lloyd in Tuebrook has reopened after a £2.2m refurbishment. The centre shut in 2020 for work including a new roof and repairs to water damage, however there have been delays in its reopening. Now work on the site is complete, with a new gym area and refurbished sports hall. While he admitted it had been a "frustrating few years", cabinet member for health, wellbeing and culture Harry Doyle said he was “delighted”.
Liverpool on screen...not exactly a holiday destination
By Jack Walton
“It’s like playing whack-a-mole…Except the moles wear trackies. Every night, there’s blood on my boots and spit on my face and it never, ever stops.”
Chris Carson is up against it. He’s seen things no man should have to see. Untold horrors; bleakness unbounded. The sights and smells of Liverpool’s back alleys, crack dens, and holding cells are practically etched into his furrowed brow.
Carson is played by Martin Freeman in BBC’s The Responder, the second season of which came out a couple of months ago to rave reviews (not unlike its first). But five stars in The Guardian will do little to assuage the bleakness of life as a character in a Liverpool-based TV drama. You wouldn’t wish that on your worst enemy.
Much like Carson and his trackie-wearing moles, you’d need a big plastic hammer and some seriously fast reflexes to keep on top of all the unerringly dark crime drama coming out of Liverpool these days. The latest will be This City is Ours, in which Sean Bean will play the lead. No prizes for guessing the role Bean has landed: a hardened gang leader called Ronnie Phelan.
How will Bean fare in the role? Probably very well. He certainly did well last time he popped up in a Liverpool-based production. That was Jimmy McGovern’s Time, and his portrayal of Mark Cobden — a teacher thrust into the brutality of prison who must learn to adapt — was phenomenal. No surprise, McGovern’s work is usually excellent.
This time Bean will be working with Stephen Butchard, though, who returns to Liverpool for the first time since 2012’s Good Cop, which saw ordinary copper John Paul Rocksavage’s life get turned on its head after the murder of his best friend in a savage ambush (perhaps the savageness of said ambush inspired his name). The ever-brilliant Stephen Graham appears in both Time and Good Cop: once as a prison officer who ends up in prison; once as a vicious thug who ends up dead.
Can you spot a theme? This City is Ours will be part-funded by the LCR Production Fund, which is undoubtedly a great initiative set up to drive the growth of the local film and TV sector. But reading the press release for the new show, everything they’ve funded thus far appears to have been crime-based — with the sole exception of Help, which was set in a Liverpool care home during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
For a period in 2021, two separate projects were under production in Liverpool 8: Almost Liverpool 8, a grassroots effort from two young filmmakers living in the area, and Liverpool Narcos, a Sky three-parter (the three parts being titled “Heroin”, “Ecstasy”, and “Cocaine” respectively).
What’s interesting, says Allan Melia, one of the Almost Liverpool 8’s directors, is that the same streets appear in both films looking entirely different. In Almost Liverpool 8 they are bright and lively. In Liverpool Narcos, there’s a different colour gradient on the lens: the streets look dark and unforgiving, the backdrop to drug deals that take place in the shadows, where wretched broken souls sink into the jaws of addiction. Almost Liverpool 8 was very much the outlier.
Alongside Help, the aforementioned Channel 4 production, ITV’s more recent G’Wed is one of only a few recent non-crime productions set in Liverpool. Admittedly, this comedy about Liverpudlian teenagers was derided as rubbish upon broadcast, but hey, at least it had some themes that didn’t involve gangland shootings. As for BBC productions, it’s almost entirely one-note. When commissioning shows set in say, Manchester, they don’t appear to have this tunnel vision. Of course, the BBC is now located in Salford — perhaps they’re all concerned about their house prices.
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