Fans of the contemporary replacement for Netflix’s iconic gangster show Peaky Blinders can rejoice, as the acclaimed BBC series has already been renewed for not one, but two more seasons. The success of HBO’s expensive period gangster show Boardwalk Empire might have made Netflix hopeful, but there is no way that the streaming service could have predicated just how massive a hit Peaky Blinders would become when the series first premiered.
Set in a deprived Birmingham in the aftermath of World War 1’s devastation, Netflix’s gangster saga Peaky Blinders followed Cillian Murphy’s implacable Tommy Shelby as he turned the titular street gang from a group of mismanaged thugs into a sophisticated crime syndicate. As the six-season story of Peaky Blinders continued, the eponymous gang’s enemies grow to include corrupt cops, rival gangs, and even Oswald Mosley’s fascists.
This ambitious, immersive portrait of surprisingly sympathetic, complex criminal characters was a worthy successor to Boardwalk Empire, and Peaky Blinders itself received a fitting successor with 2026’s movie spinoff Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. While that movie effectively ended the show’s story, 2025’s underrated BBC series This City Is Ours has since gone on to offer viewers a grittier, moodier contemporary update of the Netflix hit.
This City Is Ours Is Already Renewed Through To Season 3
Set in Liverpool’s criminal underworld, This City Is Ours plays out like a less glamorized, more grounded spin on Guy Ritchie’s recent hit MobLand. Like that Paramount+ series, the show focuses on a mob fixer, James Nelson-Joyce’s Michael, who wants to keep the peace between warring factions of the city’s volatile criminal empire. However, unlike MobLand’s protagonist, Michael is no slick gangster movie antihero.
Like Tommy Shelby, Michael is perpetually caught between trying to legitimize his business to secure his family’s financial future, and trying to ensure that no one gets one over on him before he ostensibly finally bows out of his life of crime. Like Peaky Blinders, the plot of This City Is Ours kicks off with an internal power struggle as the unexpected retirement of Sean Bean’s glowering mob boss Ronnie Phelan sends Liverpool’s criminal gangs into violent disarray.
While the Shelby clan had Birmingham in the palm of their proverbial hand, the Phelan crime gang’s grip on Liverpool is more tenuous in This City Is Ours. This is what makes the BBC show feel more urgent and intense than the otherwise comparable MobLand, as its main characters don’t feel as unflappable or untouchable, and the plot of This City Is Ours feels more unpredictable as a result.
How This City Is Ours Is The Modern Day Answer To Peaky Blinders
Throughout This City Is Ours season 1, it is never clear who will emerge on top, or even alive, when the dust settles on this complex web of mob power struggles. Much like Peaky Blinders often unceremoniously killed off even major guest stars to remind viewers just how ruthless the Birmingham criminal world was, This City Is Ours never lets viewers get too comfortable.
Instead, the show repeatedly upends the audience’s assumptions about where its live-wire story is heading. Now, the show will have more screen time than ever before to explore that story. This City Is Ours has been renewed through to season 3 by the BBC, meaning viewers are guaranteed at least two more twisty seasons with the Phelan family’s criminal gang and their fixers.
Where the story of This City Is Ours will head next is anyone’s guess, but this is no bad thing. In an era when many crime thriller shows can feel too predictable or afraid of killing off major characters thanks to their plot armor, This City Is Ours wisely takes a leaf from Peaky Blinders and leaves viewers with no idea who is next on the mortician’s slab.
- Release Date
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March 23, 2025
- Network
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BBC One
