Parents' Guide to

Top Boy: Summerhouse

By Martin Brown, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 17+

British crime drama revival feels real but lacks drama.

TV Netflix Drama 2019
Top Boy: Summerhouse Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this TV show.

Community Reviews

age 16+

Based on 2 parent reviews

age 18+

Gratuitous violence, shocking, and depressing

Gory, explicit, gratuitous violence. They say the F word every second and I mean EVERY SECOND, so it starts to sound really stupid and overdone. The drama, spectacle, tension and thrill is there, acting is good, filming is good, but it's depressing and you know every episode something really awful will happen any moment. There are long scenes of heads getting battered to death and people getting stabbed multiple times. There is glamourisation here in that it's still drama, exciting, and on tv, though probably true to what actually happens I'm just not sure it goes very deeply into why or how everyone really feels about how awful it all is. It's like East Enders on crack cocaine, so if you thought EE is depressing and full of sensational drama and horrible people then this is it x100. My main issue is the worry of the influence it has on the young and how all this bad language spoken by youngsters and gratuitous violence negatively affects our kids.

This title has:

Too much violence
Too much swearing
Too much drinking/drugs/smoking
age 14+

Amazing

It is a good show and I think kids that are at least 14 can watch it because all it takes is to be mature about everything.

This title has:

Too much swearing

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (2 ):
Kids say (4 ):

Though it's mostly by-the-numbers plotwise, this series has a couple of fun things going for it. Top Boy: Summerhouse's history makes the characters feel lived in and relaxed, like the audience has just happened to turn the corner into the housing works where the primary action takes place. There's no exposition dump of the sort that weighs down a lot of new ensemble-driven dramas. And the setting feels unique. Not the depiction of the drug trade itself, which feels like a knockoff of The Wire after years of diminishing returns, but East London, a complex and underseen area that here feels ripe with discovery and dramatic possibility.

TV Details

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