Saul Dibb makes crime and period drama convincing through close attention to relationships. We value that care, though the believable people of This City Is Ours have some routine plotting to carry.
Fi1m perspective
In This City Is Ours (2025), Michael and Diana’s relationship holds our attention when another gangland betrayal does not. We cared about them because there seemed to be a life worth following beyond the business of crime. James Nelson-Joyce gives the series its strongest reason to stay, and Saul Dibb, directing alongside Eshref Reybrouck, makes room for the family relationships. This is where we rate Dibb: he makes the people matter even when the plotting has become familiar.
He began in documentaries in the late 1990s, before making his feature debut with the character-focused urban drama Bullet Boy (2004). Television’s The Line of Beauty (2006) and the period feature The Duchess (2008) widened the settings in which he worked. Journey's End (2017) took his concern for immediacy into the trenches of the First World War. The later factual dramas The Salisbury Poisonings (2020) and The Sixth Commandment (2023) kept the focus on people affected by real events. Across those changes, his preference has remained for believable behaviour rather than conspicuous stylisation.
Dibb favours natural light and real locations, a practical choice that suits his interest in performances that feel immediate. In This City Is Ours, cinematographer Joel Devlin gives the criminals’ affluence an appeal that the drama is right not to apologise for. Enjoying the money is part of why these people stay in the business, and the images help us understand that attachment. It also helps the family scenes: there seems to be a life being lived when nobody is making a threat. The setting gives the actors something more useful than a suitably menacing backdrop.
Our reservation about This City Is Ours is straightforward: the gangland manoeuvring becomes routine. Dibb and Reybrouck keep the people credible, but the family scenes are doing much of the work of holding our attention. We would welcome stories that give Dibb’s care with character something less predictable to work with. Try this series for Nelson-Joyce and the relationships; patience with the criminal business remains a condition.
Biography
Saul Dibb is a British film and television director and screenwriter. Born in London in 1968, he is a graduate of the University of East Anglia. His father is the documentary maker Mike Dibb.
Dibb's feature films include Bullet Boy (2004), for which he received a nomination for the Douglas Hickox Award; The Duchess (2008), which he co-wrote; Suite Française (2014); and Journey's End (2017). His television work includes directing The Line of Beauty (2006), NW (2016), Dublin Murders (2019), The Salisbury Poisonings (2020), The Sixth Commandment (2023) and This City Is Ours (2025).
