Top Boy season 4 release date, plot, cast, trailer and everything you need to know

Top Boy season three landed on Netflix to almost universal acclaim. The former Channel 4 show – cancelled in 2013 – made a truly triumphant return in 2019, becoming the streaming giant’s most-watched show in the UK after its release.

Set on the fictional Summerhouse estate in London’s Hackney, the series focuses on the lives of characters including drug dealers Dushane (Ashley Walters) and Sully (Kane ‘Kano’ Robinson) and has featured an impressive supporting cast over the first three seasons, including For Life‘s Nicholas Pinnock, Michaela Coel, Letitia Wright, David Hayman and Doctor Strange‘s Benedict Wong.

Much has been made of the show’s skill at depicting reality and shining a light on discrimination, with the show’s Irish screenwriter Ronan Bennett commenting on it at the Evening Standard‘s Stories Festival in September this year.

“I come from a demonised community, so I know the importance of showing that people are complex – they do bad things, good things, and they have dreams.”

Star Ashley Walters also talked about his experiences filming Top Boy at the event.

“You can’t always turn up on set and be a superhero – my insecurities and anxieties about my performance are what people vibe with,” he said. “And it’s not always about gritty drama, there’s so much hope in there – these people are happy because often, they don’t know any better. Top Boy, to me, means growth.”

The first three seasons have been compared to highly acclaimed drama The Wire, with TV critics noting that, while the first two seasons (each four episodes long) made for Channel 4 were great, the third season in 2019 improved upon both the story and characters, perhaps because the show’s new home, Netflix, gave the show runners an impressive 10 episodes to work with.

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We’ll ward off any confusion right off the bat: for long-standing Top Boy viewers, the next season will mark the show’s fourth outing. But you may also see it referred to as ‘season two’ in some places, due to it being the second run since launching in its new Netflix home.

Star Ashley Walters is certainly happy to be with the streamer. “Top Boy is a raw, real representation of street culture,” he told Vice. “It explores how these characters came to make the choices they make, and gives the audience a behind-the-scenes look as to what is happening on our streets today. It needs to be talked about and the show doesn’t shy away from giving us the platform to tell our story.

“We can’t change things if we do not acknowledge it and understand it first. Netflix is the perfect platform for this show, there aren’t many networks who would be brave enough to keep it this real.”

But what does the future hold for Walters’ drug dealer Dushane, and Kane ‘Kano’ Robinson’s Sully as they do their best to survive the mean streets of London in Top Boy season four?

Here’s everything you need to know.

Top Boy season 4 release date: When will it land on Netflix?

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It’s been a long wait between the third and fourth season. Too long, many fans will be saying, but there’s not long left now. Season four will be coming to a Netflix near you on Friday, March 18.

When we left Jamie last he’d been framed for possession of a firearm by Dushane and betrayed by close family friend and younger Ats, who planted the gun. Actions have consequences on the streets so many will be eager to find out what’s next for Ats and if that spells the end of his friendship with best friend Stef (who happens to be Jamie’s brother).

When Top Boy‘s return for a third season was first announced, outlets reported the show would be returning for not just one new series, but two – which means we’ve known about season four for quite some time.

We had to wait two years from the announcement in 2017 to the first episode of season three, but we expected season four to come sooner than that – that was, until 2020’s delays hit the TV industry.

At the start of last year, Drake confirmed that new episodes were to be expected later in 2020, and Netflix concurred a month or so later. Production was due to start in spring of that year, but was shut down due to the pandemic.

It was announced in December 2020 that filming had kick-started again in London. The news was shared by Ashley Walters and Kano in a video clip that was posted on Netflix’s official Twitter account: “We’re obviously shooting Top Boy. You asked for it, we gave it to you. There you go, season two. Netflix. Let’s go.”

“It’s going well,” Walters said (via NME‘s Friends Like These). “The scripts are really good, really tight. We’re coming at it from a new perspective this time, because I’m executive producing on this one, so creatively and script-wise I’m much more involved.”

He also chatted about how the pandemic has impacted the production: “Because of COVID, we’ve lost so many locations so we’re just having to move with what we can. One day we’re doing [episode] six, then we’re back to one, then to three.

“It’s been difficult, but rest assured to everyone listening or watching, we’ve got another banger for ya. It’s definitely going to be good.”

Top Boy season 4 plot: What’s it about?

If you enjoyed season three, you’re not alone; Top Boy‘s showrunner Ronan Bennett liked it too. “Sometimes you write something for screen and it just doesn’t come out as well as you’d hoped even though all the individual parts are good, but somehow when they’re all together they just don’t gel. This is different,” he told Metro. “I think the new season is brilliant, I really do. We don’t want to sit on our laurels.”

So, we can expect more of the same for season four, with enough added twists and surprises to keep things interesting.

There’s the fate of Dris to clear up, for one thing, after we heard a gunshot at the end of season three. Many fans seem convinced that the character, who has been around since 2011, is still alive – with many concluding that he may not even have been shot after all.

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Bennett also said (via Radio Times) that Sully will be working through some emotional turmoil in the upcoming chapter: “I remember being at the keyboard, working through after the fire in which Sully barely escapes with his life and his friend gets killed and I was kind of typing away and I put my hand to my face in the way that we’re told not to in these COVID times and I remember smelling charcoal on my fingers and thinking about that and just going with that idea that what if that is a sign for him [of the fire] and it’s in his head – this smell.

“And Dushane says to him, ‘If you can smell it when you sleep, it’s not real.’ It may not be real to Dushane but it’s very real to Sully and I think that helped us just get beyond the idea of somebody who in season one and two was quick tempered and quick to use his fists.”

He added: “Certainly we’re taking that a step further in the new season.”

As this is technically the second season on Netflix, there’s a chance Bennett looked to the original second season for inspiration, and went darker. That’s if he remembered it!

“Season 1 went out across four consecutive nights and the reviews were fantastic,” the showrunner told Dazed. “Channel 4 got a really good audience, and the demographic of the audience was young, diverse. Broadcasters chase that audience. Nobody under-30 watches live TV any more, but they did then. There was a huge buzz and excitement about it.”

“For season two it was a question of how to expand the world and move the characters along. I have to tell you that writing that season [with everything I had going on in my life], I honestly don’t remember a lot about that time. It’s such a blur to me now.

“The thing I am very aware of is that the ending of season two is really quite harsh. Season one and three have more hope. Just because of where I was at that time for season two, it worked dramatically for storytelling, but it was a hard thing to ask the audience to do. I guess you write what’s in your head and heart at the time.”

Whatever happens, expect the high standards of the first three seasons to be upheld. This is a show its cast is extremely proud of.

“This story could be told in so many different places, but us being able to actually tell our story and the stories of people around us is what’s actually important,” Ward told Wonderland.

“The most surreal concepts and ideas that you watch on TV or in films are usually the true stories,” Walters added. “[The] most exciting, the most glamorised [stories] are usually the bullshit … Transferring real stories and putting them onscreen is one of the hardest things and that’s what I think Top Boy [does] better than most other shows or films in its genre.”

“Well not even most, all of them,” Ward interrupted.

“I didn’t wanna be so mean […] I set it up and you knocked it down, baby!” Walters laughed.

Top Boy season 4 cast: Who’ll be in it?

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Ashley Walters (Dushane), Kane ‘Kano’ Robinson (Sully) and Micheal Ward (Jamie) will all be back, as season three’s big cliffhanger revolves around them. Simbi ‘Little Simz’ Ajikawo (Shelley) is also definitely returning, as she was spotted earlier this year filming on the East London set.

We’d bet our block that Jasmine Jobson (Jaq), Ashley Thomas (Jermaine), David ‘Dave’ Omoregie (Modie), Kadeem Ramsay (Kit), Lisa Dwan (Lizzie) and Saffron Hocking (Lauryn) will all be back too.

A whole host of the cast shared a reunion on Instagram in July of last year, which included Micheal Ward and Jasmine Jobson, along with Araloyin Oshunremi, Hope Ikpoku Jnr, Kadeem Ramsay and Alexander Blake (aka Blakie). It wasn’t clear whether this meet-up was anything related to the upcoming season or just a “family” reunion.

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Fans have also long-been wondering whether Drake might make a cameo at some point.

The rapper-turned-executive producer deserves a walk-on part after basically saving the series.

“It was put on Netflix after it was cancelled, a couple of years later, and we started to get a lot of interest Stateside,” Walters previously said.

“And then Drake watched it, which was weird, and we woke up one day, saw all this press over it [as] he’d posted.

“He had a picture of me and said, ‘When’s the show coming back?’ and I said it’s been cancelled and he said, ‘Well, we’ll see about that’. Cut to about a year and a half later and he came back to the table with a deal and that was it, we went from there.”

“He came back for the read-through and he was in and out of London while we were shooting. But his whole thing was he was a fan of the show first and foremost, and he just wanted us to do what we did originally. He didn’t want to have too much creative control.”

Fans have also long-been wondering whether Drake might make a cameo at some point.

The rapper-turned-executive producer deserves a walk-on part after basically saving the series.

“It was put on Netflix after it was cancelled, a couple of years later, and we started to get a lot of interest Stateside,” Walters previously said.

“And then Drake watched it, which was weird, and we woke up one day, saw all this press over it [as] he’d posted.

“He had a picture of me and said, ‘When’s the show coming back?’ and I said it’s been cancelled and he said, ‘Well, we’ll see about that’. Cut to about a year and a half later and he came back to the table with a deal and that was it, we went from there.”

“He came back for the read-through and he was in and out of London while we were shooting. But his whole thing was he was a fan of the show first and foremost, and he just wanted us to do what we did originally. He didn’t want to have too much creative control.”

Top Boy season 4 trailer: When will we see it?

When will you be able to see the trailer? Right freaking now! And boy do we need answers to some of the questions it’s sparked.

Jamie and Dushane sitting across from each other suggests Jamie took up Dushane’s deal (working for him in exchange for submitting evidence that would have him freed from jail). Things can’t be that clear cut. Would Jamie really be so forgiving?

One person who’s definitely not extending an olive branch is Sully, who warns Jamie, “Dushane, don’t speak for me, you look at me wrong, you’re done.”

His words also imply that more friction has occurred between the two brothers from another mother. When we last saw them in season three, their friendship was strained. Now it seems they haven’t quite put the pieces together and the bitter look that passes between the two underpins that presumption.

Dushane, however, has more pressing issues. The police are hot on his heels, gathering evidence that would see him put away for good.

‘Loyalty before everything’ the tagline teases, which echoes Dushane’s words, “family’s everything,” but what trials and tribulations are on their way to test that sentiment?

The trailer definitely peppers clues throughout and pretty much confirms – as we would expect – more trouble is on its way.

Source: digitalspy.com