After the mass destruction of the blitz, the Luftwaffe’s relentless bombing campaigns, London and other major UK cities saw infrastructural devastation. As kids played on bomb sites that doubled up as makeshift playgrounds, plans for the greatest clean-up and rebuild Britain had ever seen were in full swing. With pressure ramping up on the government of the day to provide authority-owned housing, architectural consultants and politicians were seeking the most cost-effective means of housing hundreds of thousands of the poverty-stricken and homeless. Their solution: to build up.
During the 1950s, hundreds of council high-rises were being erected across England, especially in London. Now commonly home to the most culturally, ethnically, and religiously diverse sets of residents in the country, these concrete jungles are central to the backdrop of Netflix’s enthralling British crime drama series, Top Boy.
Initially, a product of Channel 4 in the early 2010s, the popular show was picked up and rebooted by Netflix amid interest from rapper Drake, who went on to executive produce the new series. After a six-year hiatus, it was announced that the original cast would be reprising their roles in the project’s revival, with Ashley Walters and Kaine Robinson returning to the show as the main characters, Dushane and Sully. Here's why you should be excited.
What Top Boy Is About and Why You Should Watch
Netflix
Set in what is essentially London’s answer to the projects in the fictional East London council estate of Summerhouse, Top Boy follows several key characters in its maiden season, including two gangsters, Dushane (Ashley Walters) and Sully (Kaine Thompson), who are attempting to scale the merciless ladder of organized crime in London. There's also an eclectic mix of troubled youths who are dealing with deeply traumatic personal issues at home, as well as the ever-present threat of street violence and gang culture that is right on their very doorstep.
In Dushane and Sully’s quest to become “Top Boy,” they encounter far more than clout-craving street-corner antics. The pair come face-to-face with some of the most dangerous international cartels and drug traffickers, from Jamaicans and Turks to Albanians and Moroccans, while also simultaneously contending with up-and-coming kids on the block with aspirations to dethrone them. It's a tense, realistic seires with an excellent cast, including Empire of Light’s Michael Ward, who plays Jamie.
An Alternative Reflection of British Culture
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Naturally, Top Boy has drawn admirable comparisons to the critically acclaimed, Baltimore-based TV series, The Wire. Aside from the superficial similarities of both documenting the issues of Black-on-Black crime in their respective cities, there is something in both shows’ genetic makeup that makes them irresistibly gripping. The gritty, borderline urban decay of limescale-tinted concrete “streets in the sky” are an ever-imposing presence in the show's mise-en-scene, and a constant reminder of the inextricable link between poverty and crime.
This is London as Londoners know it, but undoubtedly somewhat of a culture shock for those whose expectations of the global city were simply not aligned with what is pictured. Top Boy isn’t just a reflection of the London gang lifestyle, it’s also a demonstration of 21st-century working-class life and the struggles thousands of people go through in one of the world’s most affluent cities to keep their heads above water while battling concurrently with issues such as institutional racism in the police force, mental health, and child neglect.
Netflix
Top Boy is a representation of London in its purest form, away from the gold-encrusted exterior of the politicians in their Westminster bubble, the grandiose royal palaces of an outdated institution, and the oligarch-owned Victorian townhouses of Kensington and Chelsea. Instead, the series depicts the cultural melting-pot of British slang where cockney meets roadman dialect, to the guns, baseball bats, and the all-too-prevalent reality of knife crime in the capital.
While there is a real element of playing into stereotypes, like director Shane Meadows’ plucky, rough-around-the-edges 2008 movie Somers Town, Top Boy is a chilling tale of London’s underclass, stuck in the perpetual cycle of the benefit trap, neglected by the government, and disillusioned by years of austerity.
There Will Be a Season 5 of Top Boy, Hollywood Be Damned
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The sprinkling of Hollywood stardust on Jellied Eels, Pie, and Mash, and two pints of London Pride on tap can often prove to be like dousing fish and chips in Lucky Charms (check Kingsman: The Golden Circle for reference), however this particular British delicacy remains untouched from the sugar-coated flavors of the Hollywood-influence. With seasons three, four, and the upcoming (and final) season five, picked up by Netflix at the behest of the culture-vulture, Drake, the authenticity of Top Boy remains true to the roots of Channel 4’s original series.
Like HBO’s Game of Thrones, the show’s narrative structure remains as brutal, fearless, and unpredictable as ever, with the program’s creators all too willing to use their flagrant disregard for sentimentality when unceremoniously culling the show’s cast. The Netflix influence has only brought more eyes to the hit show, taking what was once a show funneled towards a London-centric audience, to, if anything, a more important global market whose understanding of London is merely limited to archetypal portrayals.