This weekend, Channel 4 have announced their drama schedule for the rest of 2012 and the beginning of 2013, with the biggest revelation being that there will be more Homeland starting in October. The conspiracy drama, starring Claire Danes and Damien Lewis, did so well in the ratings for Channel 4 that they’re airing it only a few weeks after it debuts in the US on the 30th September. In addition, the channel are bringing back some of their biggest homegrown hits from last year including university-based comedy drama Fresh Meat, Ashley Walters starring in the gritty Top Boy, and E4′s Beaver Falls which despite mixed reviews, found a large fanbase. Misfits is also returning to E4 before the year is out, however it remains to be see if the show will be well-received now most of the original cast have the left the series. Read more & comment »

Channel 4 today announced the return of their critically acclaimed drama Top Boy for a second series which will be aired in four parts.

Written by Ronan Bennett, Top Boy follows the lives of a group of young people who are “living on the edge” in London’s rough Summerhouse Estate.

Directed by Yann Demange, the first series of the show introduced a host of brand new actors in the series’ major roles, including, Malcolm Kamulete who plays Ra’Nell, Sharon Duncan Brewster who plays his mum Lisa, Geoff Bell who plays Bobby Raikes, and Ashley Walters as Dushane.

Described as, “Thrilling, raw, frightening, sad, hopeful and surprisingly funny by turn”, the show attracted such great viewing figures in its recent first run, the second series was commissioned almost right away… Read more & comment »

Having just seen Ashley Walters playing a drug dealer on an East London estate in Top Boy, a gritty new Channel 4 drama, meeting him in the wood-panelled opulence of a Chelsea hotel seems somewhat incongruous.

But if the setting is a long way from the mean streets depicted in Top Boy, the conversation returns there time and again. Walters is from a similarly tough background, and his take on growing up in such an environment is tempered by troubles that almost conspired to send him down a very different life path.

Here, he discusses Top Boy, his own run-ins with authority, and his music career, and reveals that he used to do ballet in a leotard and is scared of butterflies. Ashley Walters is a man full of surprises… Read more & comment »

Kierston Wareing (It’s A Free World) and Ashley Walters (Hustle, Small Island) join forces with major UK contemporary music stars Kane Robinson aka Kano and Scorcher in an ensemble cast of new four-part thriller Top Boy.

Written by screenwriter and novelist Ronan Bennett (Public Enemies, The Hamburg Cell) and produced by Cowboy Films (The Last King of Scotland, Poppy Shakespeare) for Channel 4, Top Boy is a 4 X 60’ original drama about young lives lived on the edge. The drama looks beyond the headlines about youth crime and delves into the personal stories of those involved.

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