Grab your headphones, boot up Windows 2000, and fire up Bluetooth on your Motorola RAZR flip-phone: it’s the turn of the Noughties and the London dance sub-genre of grime is going stratospheric, with the help of pirate radio and Channel U.
Everybody wants a piece of the action – and that includes the five heroes of Grime Kids, BBC Three’s upcoming drama. Dane (Yus Jamal Crookes), Junior (Gabriel Robinson), Kai (Shanu Hazzan), Bishop (Tienne Simon) and Bayo (Juwon Adedokun) have just finished their GCSEs, they live in grime’s spiritual homeland (that is, Tower Hamlets), and they have aspirations towards greatness. In other words, the stage is set for a coming-of-age summer like no other.
They’re a fractured old group: Kai moved to Bristol years ago, and his reemergence onto the scene causes shockwaves. He’s impulsive, insecure, and (as we find out early on) cursed with a father who sees him as a failure. But he’s also the one sneaking them into gigs where they get to see their heroes up close and personal – and when the boys decide to start their own music crew, Kai’s the only one charismatic enough to lead it.
Written by Theresa Ikoko – the brains behind Hackney coming-of-age drama Rocks – the show was inspired by the book of the same name by DJ Target of the influential grime collective Roll Deep. Now a 1Xtra DJ, Target was at the heart of grime before major labels hopped aboard, and back when Skepta, JME, Wiley, and Dizzee Rascal were starting out as members of Roll Deep; his book chronicled the rise of the genre early on. With that in mind, the show is very much a love letter to East London, especially its music scene. The iconic radio station Rinse FM features here, as does Roman Road, home to now-closed record shop Rhythm Division: one of the most influential places in grime and a place of wonder for Bayo and Bishop.
But the real star here is the friendship between the boys, and the two episodes I watched lean into this hard. Robinson, Simon, Hazzan, Crookes and Adedokun are all fantastic – Hazzan in particular excels at giving real depth to the rebellious, lost Kai – and their starry-eyed optimism is impossible not to root for. One moment they’re drinking alcohol for the first time ever (“I’ll have a sherry,” Bayo innocently tells the bartender); the next, they’re getting kicked out of a gig and watching their favourite artists perform through the window. “I bet every night of their lives is the best night of their lives,” Dane says wistfully, nursing a split lip.
In line with this, the series is suffused with a lovely playfulness, from the banter between Dane and his crush Genevieve (Delove Akra) right down to the camerawork: blurry glimpses abound of artists doing their stuff through a forest of shoulders, spliced in with close-ups of the boys’ starstruck faces. One scene intercuts the action with increasingly chaotic Polaroids as their night out gets messier and messier; watching it, I felt a pang of wistfulness for my teenage years.
Musically, this is a feast for the ears, as you’d expect: drenched in thundering beats, slick tunes and the slightly homemade feeling that comes from making music in your best mate’s bedroom (or, in Bishop’s case, on an old Apple Mac in a primary school). Can it be a bit overindulgent? At times, yes: the slo-mo action and choral music that plays every time the boys have an epiphany of some sort rapidly grows tired. Plus, deft as Ikoko is with a pen, some of the plot beats required to get the boys from A to B feel a tad forced.
But on the whole, this is a joyous representation of a very particular slice of time: being young, bored, with your whole life ahead of you and limitless potential at your fingertips. “Do you think this is gonna be our last summer as kids?” Bayo asks Bishop at one point. Maybe it will be – but what a high to go out on.
