‘I star in a BBC show that’s Liverpool’s answer to The Sopranos’
Viewers are going to get addicted to the drama.
You know you’re on to a good thing if your drama has been compared to the greatest TV show of all time. So it’s high praise indeed that the BBC’s latest glossy Sunday night drama offering, This City Is Ours, has been described as the Scouse take on The Sopranos.
But does one of its main cast members, Laura Aikman, 39, agree? ‘I was a huge fan of The Sopranos, so I’m absolutely in for that,’ she tells Metro enthusiastically. Like the hit US show, This City Is Ours is a family drama set in the crime world, she explains. ‘I think that’s what keeps people coming back.’
In the eight-parter, Laura plays Rachel, a gangster accountant who is working for Liverpool’s most prominent drug-dealing family headed up by Ronnie (Sean Bean). There is in-fighting, rivalry and bloodshed as war breaks out over who is next in line to run the empire.
It is also sort of a bit like Succession but with a bit less swearing and a lot more angry Scousers. ‘It’s like [Succession] in that battle for power, between all of these people who have previously been really close,’ Aikman agrees. ‘It’s interesting to see how quickly they can turn against each other under certain circumstances.’
This City is Ours’ central antagonism is between Ronnie’s son Jamie (Jack McMullen) and his righthand man Michael (James Nelson) and it’s the women who are holding it all together but are being overlooked or ignored. Really, the badass characters are the women, including the likes of Ronnie’s wife Elaine (Julie Graham) and Michael’s girlfriend Diana (Hannah Onslow), but most of all Rachel. She is the only person capable of separating emotions from business.
The drama has been compared to The Sopranos and Succession (Picture BBC/Left Bank Pictures/James Stack)To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
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Previous Page Next Page‘That’s a great argument,’ Aikman says when I posit this to her. ‘Rachel is smart, and unlike the boys, she’s testing what’s best for the business first, as well as wanting her own power. She is thinking about the business and what the smartest move is all the time. There’s less of an ego involved, which the boys are clouded by.’
For Rachel, Aikman, who was born in London, speaks with a note-perfect Scouse accent. It was not too difficult to master, but she was apprehensive about pulling it off. ‘I’ve got an ear for accents, but I’m very aware that this is one of those accents that if you get wrong, you’ll never hear the end of it from Scousers so I was slightly scared,’ Aikman admits.
She also had a couple of sessions with a dialect coach, listened to a Coleen Rooney audiobook and adjusted her accent based on notes from her Scouse cast members.’ Everyone was really kind about respectfully telling you if you got a sound wrong or whatever, they would let you know,’ Aikman says.
The This City Is Ours cast got on like a house on fire. Aikman says Bean, 65, takes ‘time to come out of his shell’ but is ‘lovely, really gentle, very funny and generous.’ She says knowing the real Bean it’s now ‘surprising’ when he transforms into terrifying characters. ‘He’s an absolutely brilliant actor and I’ve been an admirer of his work for years,’ Aikman adds.
Aikman’s character Sonia made a surprise reappearance in the Gavin and Stacey Christmas special (Picture: BBC) Aikman first shot to fame on BBC children’s show The Mysti Show (Picture Mystical Productions)Aikman also has a knack for playing ‘villainous’ characters. Just three months ago, she infuriated the entire nation as the deeply obnoxious Sonia in the Gavin and Stacey Christmas special, who constantly puts her fiancé Smithy (James Corden) down and is committing the cardinal sin of blocking his path to true love with Nessa (Ruth Jones).
The actor says Sonia is ‘sort of’ a villain but more of a ‘brat’ and doesn’t hesitate to call her ‘extremely unlikeable’. Like everybody else, she was also praying for Sonia’s downfall. Fortunately, Gavin and Stacey fans have been able to distinguish between fact and fiction and Aikman hasn’t been subject to any abuse.
She says: ‘People have a good sense of humour about it, they have been so kind to me, and were thrilled that I kept secret. People tend to lead with “Thanks for not ruining it for us.”‘
It’s not just Gavin and Stacey that Aikman gets asked about. When we speak, she is travelling back from Manchester, where she filmed an interview for BBC Breakfast, and the researcher told her she can only think of Aikman as Mysti from The Mysti Show.
For the uninitiated, The Mysti Show was a BBC children’s show that ran from 2004 until 2005. It featured celebrity interviews, with appearances from the likes of Steve Coogan and Jackie Chan, as well as narrative segments. Despite holding a place in many millennials’ hearts, there has been no talk of a reboot.
Aikman says: ‘It’s weird because it feels like a different time now – having Saturday morning TV when there weren’t so many channels and so many options. I certainly grew up sitting in front of TV on a Saturday morning and watching those kind of magazine shows, and they’re not really a thing anymore, which I think is a shame.’
She doesn’t remember much from The Mysti Show but recalls painting a car with McFly. To this day, Aikman has no idea about the purpose of the segment or where the car ended up. I think we should get a reboot so we can all find out…
This City Is Ours airs every Sunday on BBC One from 9pm and is available to stream on iPlayer.
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