Where is ‘Top Boy’ filmed? The main locations revealed
Top Boy has officially come to an end after five seasons.
Created and written by Ronan Bennett, the crime drama follows drug dealers Dushane (Ashley Walters) and Sully (Kane ‘Kano’ Robinson) on the fictional Summerhouse estate in Hackney, London.
The show originally spanned two seasons on Channel 4 before it was dropped in 2013. Top Boy was subsequently revived by Netflix (with help from Drake) in 2019, with the fifth and final season being the third produced by the streaming service.
Other returning cast members for the fifth season include Little Simz as Dushane’s partner Shelley, Jasmine Jobson as Jaq and Lisa Dwan as Lizzie. New additions include Barry Keoghan and Brian Gleeson.
Where is Top Boy filmed?
While the Summerhouse estate isn’t real, the series has used multiple stand-ins across London. In the show’s first two seasons on Channel 4, exterior scenes in and around the estate were mainly shot on the Heygate Estate in Elephant and Castle.
Since that estate was demolished in 2014, however, many exterior and interior scenes for Summerhouse have been shot on the Samuda Estate on the Isle of Dogs.
The De Beauvoir estate in Hackney, which is believed to be the inspiration for Summerhouse, has also been used as a filming location, alongside other East London areas like Haggerston, Dalston and Newham.
Many of the show’s famous haunts are also real, including the Number One Cafe which is a functioning cafe of the same name in London Fields. Shelley’s Nail Bar, meanwhile, is a real nail salon in Canning Town called Kiki’s Nail Salon.
In the show’s third season, some of the cast also travel to Jamaica. You can check out a behind-the-scenes look at the shoot below.
Behind the scenes: Filming on location in Kingston, Jamaica with @micorazonfilms and @AshleyWalters82 pic.twitter.com/AKTGvJ6DVh
— Top Boy (@topboynetflix) September 28, 2019
A synopsis for the final season reads: “Sully’s actions at the end of the last series have rewritten his business rules with Dushane. As new shared problems arise, everything they’ve built comes under threat from forces outside and within their empire.
“Can they coexist by the rules of the road they’ve lived by their whole lives in a world that is changing before them? Or can there only be one Top Boy?”
Top Boy is available to stream on Netflix.
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Adam Starkey
NME
