“You’re a victim of your own success,” Dushane Hill’s money launderer told him in the new series of Top Boy. It certainly seems from this opening how things are going well for Hackney’s drug lord. The summerhouse property is finally booming and the business is booming.
Last season, the band coached rival Jamie (Micheal Ward) and offered him an olive oil. Here Jamie is out of jail and working with Dushane (Ashley Walters), who is happily in love with Shelley (Little Simz) and plans to go “legit” soon.
But life in Top Boy is built on a precarious card house – almost literally in this case with the planned redevelopment of the summerhouse estate, the evictions and scattering of the community ironically funded by Dushane in an attempt to avoid taxes.
Meanwhile, problems are on the horizon thanks to Jamie’s simmering resentment over his new maintenance of his former opponent. Then there is the collapse of a crucial deal on the continent triggered by a zero-sum final shootout, which serves as a reminder that the events at Hackney have far-reaching roots.
Top Boy never forget that the big showy moments only work when it gets the little things right, from Jamie’s hearts connected to his young brothers to the desperate search of a mother for her son, Ats, who is just one of many young real estate kids who and Dushane’s vertebrae are sucked.
Walters is as magnetic as ever, impressing Dushane with a troubled cockiness, but he is adapted by Kane Robinson as former right-wing man Sully, tortured by what he has done in the name of her illegal empire.
Just like in the previous series, none of these characters are caricatures, no dialogue feels forced and there is no weak link throughout the cast. Top Boy is a show that always stays true to itself: made for people who have watched and loved it from the beginning.
Top Boy is now being streamed on Netflix
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