Jason Okundaye

Top Boy is coming to an emotional end – and a violent one. Time Out’s Jason Okundaye heads to south London to witness the shit hit the fan on Netflix’s smash-hit crime drama It’s nighttime on a biting October night, I’m in London’s Clapham Park Estate and there’s a riot on the cards. Around me, the estate is being fitted with pyrotechnic devices, protest banners are being hung and police vans parked up. The cameras are rolling on Netflix’s hit crime drama Top Boy, where the estate’s modernist surroundings will double as the show’s fictional home turf: Hackney’s Summerhouse Estate. Ashley Walters is on set as drug kingpin Dushane Hill, and shit is about to go down. Twelve years on from its debut on Channel 4, Top Boy is coming to an end – and Time Out is here to witness it happen. The show has already had one farewell in 2014, before Netflix picked it up three years later. But this one looks like being for keeps. Top Boy goes out as a truly global sensation – a crime thriller and an acute psychological portrait of what it takes to come out on top in the merciless game of drug supply.  Photograph: Netflix/Chris HarrisDushane (Ashley Walters, right) and Sully (Kano) in season 2 Homecoming kings More than the sum of gang rivalry, international supply chains, and relentless murders, Top Boy has always been elevated by its depiction of London – the city’s homes, communities and everyday struggles. It’s always felt ahead of its time, and that’s a source of pride around here. ‘When