Three years is a long time to wait for a new season of television. For Top Boy fans, the wait was excruciating. Fresh from an earlier six-year hiatus, the edgy Channel 4 drama about drugs and gangs in Hackney returned in 2019 on a new platform (Netflix), with new celebrity backing (hello, executive producer Drake!) and a newly global viewership. Still, it remained distinctly itself; its core audience was thrilled to have it back, while people fresh to the show got engrossed in its rich authenticity. As soon as it was over, people wanted more.
Last Friday morning, the wait was over: season two (or four, depending on how you classify the original run) finally dropped. By Sunday morning, major spoilers from its final episode had been splashed across social media. For some viewers, early public discussion was expected, so they squeezed the entire eight-episode season into a weekend. And even if the threat of spoilers wasn’t a concern, many people binged the show simply because they could.
