Top Boy - Ashley Walters & Kano - Channel 4

[Im Broke]

Dushane Ra'neil and Kamale wtf?

[Vertigo]

Very hard to get a normal black drama commissioned. Last good one i remember was babyfather and how long ago was that?

[Guest phonecharger]

iam guessing scorcher will have the roles of a killer, a sweetboy and a positive role model

[2deal2]

The writer is RONAN BENNETT (Yes, a white guy...)

Ronan Bennett spent two years interviewing gang members in east London for his powerfully personal TV drama, Top Boy. Here he describes their hidden, hopeless world – and the lengths they'll go to escape from it.

Nathan is 19. He's mixed race, tall, slim and fit. He has a No 1 haircut and is dressed in a T-shirt, tracksuit bottoms and trainers. He has a silver chain round his neck. His mobile rings. He speaks quickly: "Four on four, cuz, yeah… Wait a second." He asks how much longer we're going to be. Maybe another 30 minutes. We're sitting at a table outside a café on Mare Street, next to Hackney Town Hall. I sip my drink. "Thirty minutes," he says and ends the call. He looks at me, a slow look, unemphatic. "Customer." What's four on four, I ask. "He wants four 10-bags of dubs and four 10-bags of B." Dubs? B? "Dubs are white drugs – crack and cocaine. B is brown, obviously, heroin." Nat is a drug dealer. He never refers to his merchandise as drugs. He calls it food.

Nat tells me that if you're selling food the best way to make a lot of money quickly is to "go country". "Someone might come to you and say: 'We're making some money, you wanna make some?' You go on a train or a cab or you drive and you come to a house and there could be 10 people in that house or more. We're there to sell food. Lot of times there's guns as well. One house I was in there was four guns. You gotta have guns cos there's people, they found out you was in this house with all this food, they might think they'll come and take your food, do you get what I mean?"

What part of the country? "Anywhere out of Hackney," he says, deadpan. "Could be…" he thinks for a moment. "Was somewhere beginning with B, I don't remember. Furthest I've been was Slough. I was in Finchley once and another place… begins with T. I don't remember. In the house there'll be thousands worth of dubs and B that someone further up the ladder has got and you're there to sell them fast. You go out there and you sell and you sell, day and night. You're selling to every type of person. White man in his 60s, young black man, women, all kinds of people. Some of them are nice people, but you gotta be bad with them until they get to know you. Like having a dog. You have to punish it up so it won't bite you. I had one guy, he started to walk off with £160 worth of food. I went after him and said: 'Bruv, where you going?' And I punched him in the mouth and he said sorry. I said: 'Next time you come, you come correct.' It's not a nice business to be in."

Going country is hard work for foot soldiers (Nat's self-description), exhausting. Nat might stay five or six days and nights in the house, selling food round the clock. The idea is to identify an area where there is demand, service it and get out before the police get wind of your presence. "Not everyone sleeps in the house. Some people, they finish by a certain time every day so they can go college." He pauses. "You gotta understand, where I come from this is not bad. There's people doing good things like going college and they're also doing this."

More at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/oct/09/top-boy-teenage-drug-dealers?newsfeed=true

[Vertigo]

A little more about Bennett .

In 1974 while at school Bennett was convicted of murdering Inspector William Elliott, a 49 year-old police officer in the Royal Ulster Constabulary during an Official IRA bank robbery at the Ulster Bank in The Diamond shopping area at Rathcoole, close to his Merville Garden Village home, on 6 September 1974. His conviction was overturned on appeal in 1975 and Bennett was released from Long Kesh prison near Lisburn, Co. Antrim. Later Bennett apparently displayed a sympathy towards the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), which made its name after it killed Margaret Thatcher's Northern Ireland advisor Airey Neave in 1979.

Bennett then moved to London. In 1978 he was arrested for conspiracy to cause explosions and spent 16 months in prison on remand. Bennett conducted his own defence, and he and his co-defendants were acquitted in 1979. He studied history at King's College London receiving a first class honours degree, and later completed his Ph.D. at the college in 1987.

[MARVELL]

another white man trying to look from the outside in..of the urban flex......he will get "awards" and the black actors will get their 9 minutes of fame, probably get lunch with cameron...but behind the scenes all the program will do is reinforce stereotypes ......and the govt wont do shit about the root causes. This is nothing like the wire....written by a policeman turned journalist who was in those streets day in day out.... this one went to 'interview' people and now wants to use them to win an oscar/ emmy/tv award. fuck him and i wont be watching any wire wannabees. even if the guy did his homework and wrote this very well...its doubtful this will be portrayed on screen. .... i still rate shadowlands as one of the best british dramas ive seen in a while...cdnt even believe it was on the BBC.

[Benicio del Toney]

is crime the only thing that happens in "the hood"? everytime these kind of shows/films come out its just violence, cant there be like a normal drama or something?

lol what I was thinking fucking ehhl.

It's been done before shit!

[Trilliam]

fuck this hood shit

i just want a good black british drama or ill do it myself

holla at me after sket drops and u cant take no more

we'll do dis ting

[Seth Rollins]

No it doesn't look good. It's just got a couple MC's tryna make it in the music game in a 4 part series about drugs in East LDN.

Oh and some Grime.

[Wavant]

Ha! I Know the girl who worked on the casting for this, she wanted to get Dirty Dangerous to play the Scorcher role

Once I heard that and the other names being flung around I knew what road this was going down*.

*See Goliath's post

[Beavis]

looks shit.

[Da Luv Doc]

Will be rubbish. Asher D shouldn't have agreed to do this.

Like Venom said, will not benifit anyone bar the writer.

[MARLO STANSFIELD]

Asher D, Kano, Scorcher and whatever other black man is involved in this is a coon for this.

the fact this bennet guy is the writer of it should wake em up but if you give a monkey a banana he will jump through hoops for peanuts.

[DAT_YOUT_FROM_E15]

I'm dossapointed in Kano for taking part in this

Scorcher is a waste of space hel jump on anything

As fir asha d low him his 1st top boy role usually he's jus in a wheelchair

[The Somalian]

Lmao

Usually in a wheel chair u know

E15>>>>

[RYDER.]

When's misfits back on?

[Bruno Di Gradi]

When's misfits back on?

sunday

[The Somalian]

Just see the trailer was this filmed in stepney green I notice a few blocks I use to pick up

From

[TF S4DK]

Awaits to watch all four and comment.

After writing Luther off after episode 1, I will never jump the gun.

Well unless its Belly 2 with The Game, or Juice with Soulja Boy...

[MARVELL]

idiris elba wouldnt have read that luther script and agreed to it if it was shit

i still prefered shadowlands to luther tho but them man arent hungry like asher D and co so dont need to be cast in pants

[TF S4DK]

Yeah cos Idris Elba never been involved in a dud has he...

[CarltonLeach]

Yeah cos Idris Elba never been involved in a dud has he...

You werent meant to imply this.

[Guest Portuguese]

Family Affairs

[The Somalian]

Elba was in fam affairs

My god sisters cousin played the buff black girl in that hold tight the Thomas famo

[Guest Portuguese]

Yasmin yeah?