I’m about the same age as Dushane and Sully, the fictional protagonists of London gangster epic Top Boy, and I also grew up on a Hackney council estate a bit like their Summerhouse drug-dealing dominion. So it seems possible that, in some TV-merged alternate reality, we might have played out together as kids. Long summer days of knock-down ginger and cussing matches in the stairwells, until your mum calls you home for dinner.
I grew up, moved away and got on with life, but Dushane and Sully never did. They stayed behind, inextricably tied to the estate: a home, and also a kind of hell. That can happen when you’re surrounded by looming high-rises that shrink your horizons. For all their outward swagger, Dushane (played by Ashley Walters) and Sully (Kane “Kano” Robinson) are grown men who aspire only to be the “boy”. For all they hustle and hard-scrabble their way to riches and respect, it’s only ever a matter of time before they’re laid low again.
