Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
The accents are different, but the story is the same: a troubled home, a dangerous environment, young people presented with little option in life other than joining a gang and engaging in the illegal drug trade. Whether it’s the United States, Britain, or anywhere else in the world, the lives of the people trapped in this scenario are more similar than they are different.
In HBO’s much-lauded epic drama series The Wire, creator David Simon painted a bleak tableau of how American society’s institutional failures create this pipeline in West Baltimore. In the British Channel 4 series Top Boy, whose two seasons are available on Netflix, we see many of those same processes play out in the public housing projects of East London.
We’re introduced to Ra’Nell, a sensitive, thoughtful young man who initially resists joining up with the drug dealers who inhabit Summerhouse, the public housing estate where he lives with his ailing single mother, Lisa. He knows that accepting anything from them — even if it’s just a seemingly-friendly offer of a few pounds in spending money — will send him down a dangerous path, one he’s not sure he wants to go down.
The calculus of the situation changes quickly for Ra’Nell, though. His mother’s condition worsens and she ends up in a mental hospital, diagnosed with psychotic depression – and he ends up all alone, after she lies to her social workers about having any children that they might need to check on. He needs help, he needs money – he needs an authority figure in his life. He faces what may be his only option: joining up at the street level of the drug trade.
His entry into the Summerhouse crew is waylaid, though — if perhaps only temporarily — by the interference of Leon, an old friend of his absent father and self-appointed surrogate parent. Leon’s been down this road himself, having gone to prison for his own youthful experiences. He’s seen the consequences firsthand, and he wants to save Ra’Nell from that life – if he can.
Parallel to Ra’Nell’s story, we see the machinations within the Summerhouse drug trade, as street-level operatives Sully and Dushane (played by British rappers Asher D and Kano) attempt to fight their way up the ladder of kingpin Bobby Raikes’ organization. They’ve been robbed by better-armed rivals from another crew, and they want more control over their situation – but where Ra’Nell is stymied by Leon’s good intentions, Sully and Dushane’s roadblock is Lee Greene, a vicious middle manager who has no intention of ceding any ground to the up-and-comers.
Top Boy features a deep and talented cast, including at least one face now familiar to American viewers; just as The Wire introduced us to a young Michael B. Jordan, his Black Panther co-star Letitia Wright appears here in one of her earliest on-screen roles. Scenes are undergirded by a powerful, thudding electronic soundtrack provided by legendary composer Brian Eno.
There’s fewer guns than in The Wire — it’s London, not the United States — but the violence and danger the characters face is every bit as real. These are brutal circumstances, and the stakes are life-and-death. It feels more intense and visceral, too, the story being condensed into a much shorter overall runtime. The Wire‘s saga unfolds slowly over 13 hours a season, and while that operatic, Dickensian scope is a large part of the show’s appeal for diehard fans (myself included), it can also serve as a barrier to entry for viewers who aren’t willing to commit that amount of time for a slow-burning payoff.
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Top Boy, by contrast, follows the more succinct, get-right-to-the-point fashion of British shows, playing out over only four episodes in each of its two seasons to date. Eschewing any of the American show’s focus on police, politics or government institutions, it sticks to the heart of the story – to the drug trade and the people caught up in its wake. It’s as though we got a show featuring Wallace and the Barksdale crew in a third of the time.
That doesn’t mean there’s not time for plenty to happen, and for the consequences of each character’s actions to come to a head – Ra’Nell, despite Leon’s best efforts, will find a backdoor into the drug trade; Sully and Dushane will make aggressive moves that play out in disastrous and unexpected ways; other characters who’ve only been on screen for a couple episodes will have us fully invested in — and in some cases leave us saddened by — their eventual fates.
Despite a long gap since the second season’s airing in 2013, a third season has been ordered and will debut on Netflix this year, thanks to a push by fan and newly-joined executive producer Drake. That makes it a great time to catch up on the first two seasons now, and get on board with what could be one of this year’s sleeper streaming hits.
Scott Hines is an architect, blogger and internet user who lives in Louisville, Kentucky with his wife, two young children, and a small, loud dog.
