![]() ![]() "It's true and it's not," said Michael Brown, 19. Top Boy, written by Ronan Bennett after extensive research into Hackney's underclasses, undoubtedly has authenticity. With 38% of the population of Hackney surviving on benefits, few homes are equipped with flatscreen TVs. "It's a drama not a documentary, so it's going to happen but I don't like the glorification of the gangs, that worries me." "There's a lot of playing into stereotypes," he said. ![]() Familiar issues for Egbuonu, but not, he insists, universal. It's about young people in a deprived estate struggling to survive, dealing with the temptations of violence, gangs and drugs, and touching on themes of mental health, single-parent families, neglected children and loyalty. Outside the battered little low building on the De Beauvoir estate, the soundtrack to real life is interspersed night and day with the noise of the sirens of the emergency services that carry across the quiet estates and echo through the maze of concrete walkways. He has lost friends to shootings and stabbings, and knows life stories as tragic as anything a TV writer could create. They had been collected together in the Crib youth club by Emeka Egbuonu, 25, who has just self-published a book, Consequences, on his experiences of growing up in Hackney and then working with the kids and the gangs who came up behind him. It emerged with broad approval but not unscathed. Set in a fictitious Hackney housing estate and filmed in east London, the programme is being judged by these critics with an unusually fierce eye. With a dozen or so other young people aged from 10 to 26 from Hackney, Becker agreed to review for the Observer the new four-part Channel 4 drama Top Boy, which starts tomorrow. He hauled his black hat down further over his ears and slumped back to the screen. ![]()
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