★★★☆☆

Jude Yawson looks at the latest series of Top Boy – an ambitious and admirable project that ultimately bites off a little bit more than it can chew.

Drugs, money, family and friends; the imposition of local governance, gentrification, and the trauma evident in society and many of our ends; trust, instant gratification, grooming, abuse and violence. These are just some of the important themes that define the latest series of Top Boy – a fact that both helps and hinders the show.

By this stage, Top Boy has cemented itself as an exciting crime drama, evolved from its earlier days on Channel 4. It spans continents and explores issues that impact disenfranchised communities. More importantly, it reveals no plans of letting up now.

Written by Ronan Bennet, Top Boy is a series that captures life on the block, in the hood, through an ever growing spread of characters that, for me, are mostly recognisable. Like the show’s themes, however, the extent of the characters does not always do their storylines a service.

Based mainly on the escapades of Dushane Hill (Ashley Walters) and Gerald “Sully” Sullivan (Kano/Kane Robinson) as the publicly hidden overseers of the Summerhouse Estate, the show is about their desire to become and maintain the status of being the Top Boy’s in ends. On top of that, it incorporates so much through various characters who live in Summerhouse. This bolsters the wider story and creates a wider picture of the environment.

Series 4 brings us back to a now thriving Summerhouse – at least insofar as the people under Dushane’s control are making money. No murders have been committed in a while – an unfortunate testament to such areas being in a good place – and the operation is thriving. With things running smoother and there being less bait for police to track, the main players are making peaceful profit on the roads and prioritising maintenance and order. This becomes especially important when the supply chain is hit by the police. 

But Dushane faces a number of problems. He is tasked with the return of Jamie (Michael Ward), who ended series 3 in jail having been blackmailed into either working under Dushane or spending a hefty time behind bars. He is focused on solidifying his role in the business by cutting out the middle man – Lizzie (Lisa Dawn) – to deal directly with the Spanish and Moroccans.

As for Sully? He remains on the periphery, traumatised by the death of his best friend at his own hands. While Sully is an absolute psycho, he can’t be described simply by madness and is the most morally attuned character in the show.

Meanwhile, Jamie is battling to uphold straining relationships with his brothers, Stef and Aaron, who are essentially growing into their own as individuals away from his control. This, while attempting to overtake and/or succeed the ageing Dushane. As Jamie steadily becomes lost in the lifestyle, this series focuses on the impact it and his selfish ambitions have on his family.

A new friend for Stef is the troublesome Tia, a child expelled from school and left out of the system. She is a character I can identify with to an extent, having seen people like her before, and experiencing the dark depths of exclusion at an early age. It is such a thing “seen people like” in Top Boy, most of these actors are simply channelling the people they know.

Ats – who ended last season planting a bag full of contraband to stitch up Jamie – is an illusive character over the season. Even though he was one of the main players in the last, this season is focused more on his mother, who like others in such ends, is fighting to stay in this country. 

A key issue within the season is Saving Summerhouse, with residents attempting to battle the council to ensure it stays up and isn’t knocked down for redevelopment that surely pushes and relocates these residents outside of their area and community. It is a reality occurring until this day, and will essentially never go away.

This season takes a closer look at Jaq (Jasmine Jobson) as she is seeking that much more normality by dating and rekindling broken relationships with family, mainly her sister Lauryn (Saffron Hocking) who was sent away in the last season for exposing the Summerhouse sets plans to a rival. It expands on her love interest and the trauma that comes with lesbian relationships, highlighting something I had not entirely considered before. In her position as a hard bodied member of Summerhouse, and the very real hood chick representation she provides, it’s hard to conceive how they spoke or acknowledge issues regarding homophobia. When all tied together, I feel the main ideal is of relationships and trust. The season hyper focuses on how people connect with each other, the things in which they do to maintain or play on trust and people’s commitments to each other. It is an interesting season, but it felt very intermediary – as if something was always coming. Suspense filling, but missing a lot at the same time.

Personally, I don’t think this season was as great as the last, despite being worth a watch. Just look at all those above – it’s too many sub plots. It over commits to too many irrelevant, small stories from a wide range of characters that end up short lived and leaves you wanting for more. You can expect a lot from next season, but there are too many loose ends that don’t build on the main story of the show take away from that suspense. I left the last episode shocked, but only at how unfulfilled I felt by the things they didn’t expand on. The expansive ideas it intends to incorporate may have been too much, as it alludes to a lot but can only show so much.

Admittedly, part of the season’s issues may be due to COVID and filming restrictions. For example, I didn’t get a major sense of Spain and Morrocco in the scenes spent there – a minor criticism if not a harsh one, understandable in a hopefully-almost-post-Covid era. 

Although some things didn’t entirely make sense to me, I ended up binge watching this show because the suspense it creates is tremendous. The cinematography boasts rich colours and awesome still and perspective shots, that literally kept me glued to the screen. Though another reason I was so glued was to attempt to salvage things from those intertwining stories. It pales in comparison to the last season, simply by the writing alone. What saved this season for me was again the immense acting work of Kano. He is a sublime actor, and you’d think he had been doing this for an age. 

For all its faults, it is an ever-growing show that collates generations of work up until this point, involving a wide-range of talent and hosting important conversations on the big screen. The cultural significance of this cast, even outside of acting, is astounding. Ashley Walters was one of many stars in So Solid Crew, a Garage and UK Hip Hop collective that were a phenomenon back in the day, but even before then he had an acting resume that stems back to Grange Hill. Kano was and still is one of the stars of Grime, a legend that changed my life by his music and lyricism alone. These two are a great force when together, championing a natural style of acting as real people from such areas, but also evidently acknowledging the weight of the intertwining stories being told. The interjections of characters from a variety of scenes, such Buck, Koomz, Nolay, and more is commendable, and, in many senses,. true.

This is an intergenerational project, involving people that understand the importance of highlighting the issues they can. They talk about domestic violence (albeit maybe dealt in a wrong and dramatised way), problems with immigration, police corruption and harassment. This alone deserves some praise.

But it was disappointing. Last season had us entrenched in these characters, their feelings, and the decisions they had to make with immediacy – while this season is quite lax, at times random, and sometimes even offers some cringe worthy acting. Then again, you can still respect the process of selection when it comes to Top Boy. Such a series is larger than it is for a reason, as it carries the weight and expectation of being the most entertaining show from this culture and community. The ending of the season has left a lot of space open for a Season 5, which I expect to be as great as the 3rd.