Top Boy

Graham Craycraft

Top Boy is a 2019 Netflix original spawning from two previous seasons of a 2011 show called Top Boy: Summerhouse. All three seasons were created by Ronan Bennett and have many of the same main characters. This review, however, is here to talk about the 2019 reboot. The show follows two rival drug gangs fighting for territorial control in a section of London, England. Jamie, played by Micheal Ward, leads the Zero Tolerance gang while Dushane and Sully, played by Ashley Walters and Kane Robinson respectively, lead the Summerhouse gang named for the territory they occupy. 

The show is filled with violence, thick London accents and slang, and a large emphasis on family. As the episodes progress we see that each prominent member of the gangs has some family baggage they carry around. I say baggage only because it is heavy and often gets in the way of a clear path to the top, but the characters prove time and again that they will do anything in their power to protect their family. One of the show’s strengths is the ambiguity on good versus bad. Obviously both gangs are anti-heroes at best (like we see in Peaky Blinders and Boardwalk Empire). But unlike Peaky Blinders and Boardwalk Empire, Top Boy provides a unique point of view in which the audience can form empathetic attachments with either gang. Meaning that depending on your personal family ties and how you watch the show you could see the Summerhouse gang as the protagonist and Zero Tolerance gang as antagonist, or vice versa.

The crux of the show, and the path the gangs seek, is found in its name. Each character has one goal in mind, and that is to become the Top Boy, the king of the land and usher in a reign of complete control over the drug trade and crime in the area. The season is a slow burn, but each episode seems to pick up steam with an ultimate episode that literally had me sitting on the edge of the seat. I like to think of the show as a modern day Peaky Blinders with its own challenges that could only exist in the modern world. Instead of having to balance post world war one ptsd, the members instead see the police and technology as a larger hurdle to overcome. We see that the gangs fight with strategy and a code of honor. Some character’s install a Machivellian approach, severing the code of honor in order to do anything it takes to win, while others hold to Ned Stark mind frame in that within the lines of the code, anything goes, but outside that line is territory not worth treading. 

I definitely recommend this series and am excited to see if they choose to continue with it (which it looks like they will).