Top Boy Episode 1 Synopsis

Meet 13-year-old Ra'Nell (Malcolm Kamulete), who lives with his single mother Lisa (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) on the Summerhouse estate. Lisa is depressed and can't get out of bed, but Ra'Nell has to get to school with his good friend Gem (Giacomo Mancini), so reluctantly leaves her behind at home as he starts his day.

Meanwhile in the courtyards of the estate 26-year-old Dushane (Ashley Walters) and his partner Sully (Kane Robinson) are running their covert drugs business, but things start to go badly wrong when they have their stash stolen by a rival, Kamale (Tayo Jarrett), leader of the London Fields Mandem. Their boss, Lee Greene (Cyrus Desir) tells them they now owe £3,000 to his boss, Bobby Raikes (Geoff Bell) - so setting the scene for a dramatic escalation of the simmering turf war that forms the backdrop to their daily lives.

Later, Lisa ventures out shopping but, unable to cope with the outside world, finds herself taken to hospital where she is sectioned. Terrified that he will be taken into care, she omits to mention Ra'Nell to the staff there, but help materialises in the shape of Leon (Nicholas Pinnock), a friend of her estranged husband and reformed gang-member who works as a personal trainer at the hospital. He seeks her out and promises to keep an eye on Ra'Nell.

At the same time, Lisa's friend and fellow estate resident Heather (Kierston Wareing) is hatching a plan fraught with hazard to escape her surroundings and begin a new life before the birth of her child.

And unknown to all of them, their individual ambitions, desires and relationships are about to become deeply and irrevocably enmeshed.