Sorry MobLand, There's Another Don Of Modern Gangster Shows In Town

Published Oct 5, 2026, 5:16 PM EDT

Before his Paramount series MobLand brought him back to mafia stories, Ritchie directed everything from the war movie The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare to the fantasy film King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. He even helmed lighthearted blockbusters like the spy thriller The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and 2019’s live-action Aladdin remake, although 2008’s RocknRolla and 2019’s The Gentlemen proved his obsession with the criminal underworld never left him.

As such, it was a welcome comeback when Ritchie created 2025’s dark, gritty series MobLand, the story of Tom Hardy’s conflicted London “Fixer,” Harry Da Souza. Employed by the Harrigan crime dynasty, Da Souza’s job is to clean up the loose ends left behind by Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren’s paranoid mob royalty. With a killer supporting cast including Luke Mably, Janet McTeer, and Paddy Considine, MobLand was more grounded and tragic than most of Ritchie’s forays into gangster stories. However, the show was outdone by the same year’s underrated This City Is Ours.

This City Is Ours Is Similar To MobLand In Premise, But Better

Starring Sean Bean as the mob kingpin Ronnie Phelan, This City Is Ours is a Liverpool-set mob drama that sees Phelan’s attempts to retire from his life of crime lead to an unintended power vacuum that causes chaos in the city’s underworld. Ronnie’s son Jamie assumes he is his father's natural successor, while Ronnie’s longstanding fixer, Michael Kavanagh, feels just as entitled to the role. What follows is a brutal, but also unexpectedly witty and deadpan tale of duplicity, deceit, and death.

Where MobLand takes itself very seriously, rarely even allowing for Scorsese-style moments of dark humor, Ritchie’s Netflix hit The Gentlemen takes mob movie tropes to the opposite extreme. Cartoonish and outlandish, the show is almost a parody of the mafia genre, and feels too playful to be viewed alongside The Sopranos, Peaky Blinders, or even MobLand itself. In contrast, This City Is Ours gets the balance between camp, tension, drama, and pure brutality just right.

The series is gripping, but also has a sense of humor about itself. With supporting turns from Derry Girls breakout star Saoirse-Monica Jackson and Darci Shaw, This City Is Ours spends a surprising and welcome amount of screen time focusing on the women behind the men of the mob, many of whom are just as ambitious, scheming, and ruthless as Lady Macbeth.

This City Is Ours Is The Modern Successor To Peaky Blinders

Like a contemporary version of Peaky Blinders, This City Is Ours dares viewers to root for its criminal antiheroes without entirely whitewashing their life of crime. Fortunately, the show never takes this as far as the Yellowstone franchise, which tripped over itself to make the central Dutton family seem blameless in their crimes and ended up feeling like an R-rated Dallas or Dynasty as a result. In contrast, This City Is Ours has real stakes and reckons with the evils of its protagonists, but also makes their story morally complex and their choices understandable.

Sharp witted and unpredictable, This City Is Ours is the modern successor to Peaky Blinders, and a killer mob story to boot. While Ritchie’s two mob shows can be a bit too dour and a bit too goofy respectively, this BBC drama gets that tricky tonal balance just right. As such, while MobLand might be better known, This City Is Ours is the new British crime family saga that has truly revitalized the genre.