SoHo Tops for Best of British

Next month SoHo will premiere in HD the British drama series Top Boy and Five Days 2.

Top Boy is a Channel 4 thriller about urban drug and cast culture starring new and old faces, including Ashley Walters (Get Rich or Die Tryin’), musician Kane ‘Kano’ Robinson, Sharon Duncan Brewster (Bad Girls), Geoff Bell (War Horse), and Kierston Wareing (The Shadow Line).

This month it won the best drama serial prize at the UK Royal Television Society Awards, of which Channel 4 scooped the most, and has been renewed for another four-part run.

Said the TV Times: “Ronan Bennett’s affecting drama turns the landscape of east London into a bewitching backdrop for scenes of drug dealing, violence, splintered families and social realism …

“There’s a feel of The Wire about this stinging portrayal of London’s underbelly and, beautifully shot and incredibly stark, we predict a rave reception for this award-worthy drama.”

Echoed The Daily Telegraph: “I badly wanted to review Top Boy without mentioning The Wire.

“The masterly series about gangs and police in Baltimore has become the lazy reference point for any programme showing more than two minutes of conversation between black people. Often the similarities are more notable by their absence.

“I can’t, though. From the lingering shots of East London at the start of tonight’s first episode, it was clear that Top Boy has the HBO series in its blood.”

Top Boy will air 8.30pm Thursdays from April 12 (with encores at 7.30pm Tuesdays from April 17).

There’s a melting pot theme to the sequel to Five Days, which uses the same format to dramatise an unexpected suicide that could be a murder and the abandoning of a baby in a bathroom.

It stars Suranne Jones (Scott & Bailey), David Morrissey (South Riding), Anne Reid (Life Begins), Hugo Speer (Bleak House), Bernard Hill (The Lord Of The Rings), and Matthew McNulty (Cranford).

Raved the Mail On Sunday: “It’s a multilayered thriller juggling plenty of characters … So instantly and utterly addictive that you might as well cancel any plans you had for going out.”

But other critics were less laudatory. The Independent praised the outstanding acting but said the story “moved from barely tolerable contrivance to flagrant implausibility” while the Telegraph thought “it trundled along frustratingly slowly for no apparent reason, when it should be barrelling along”.

It screens 8.30pm Tuesdays from April 17; encores 7.30pm Saturdays from April 21.