In a modern academy secondary school in a deprived part of Leeds, adults wrangle a group of children into their places and a hush descends, before a director calls “Action!”
It’s a Tuesday in May – but it is not a school day. The kids have come in during the holidays to be extras in a new BBC comedy drama, Crongton, set on a fictional housing estate.
The 10-part series, the first episodes of which air this evening, follows Lemar “Liccle Bit” Jackson (Samson Agboola), a child who, as adults would recognise, is being groomed into joining a gang. But this is nothing like Adolescence, the Netflix drama that has prompted endless debate about society and toxic masculinity. This is a kids’ TV programme. Adults are not invited.
The show is an adaptation of a hit book series by the lauded novelist Alex Wheatle, who won the Guardian children’s fiction prize in 2016 with hissecond Crongton book. The BBC show arrives amid upsetting news for its cast and crew, as it was announced on Friday that Wheatle had died.
“It is with great sadness to inform you that Alex Wheatle, our ‘Brixton Bard’, sadly passed away on Sunday 16 March 2025 after his fight with prostate cancer,” his family wrote in a statement posted on social media.
The series writer, Archie Maddocks, who adapted the bestselling novels, says the books are darker and grittier than the screen version.
It might be a softer version of the story, with bright colours and upbeat music, but the themes need to be hard-hitting to reach children in the digital age, he says.
“The kids also know much more about the world than they did when I was younger because they’ve got social media,” says Maddocks, a comedian who also plays a teacher in the show.
He says Crongton’s job, as well as to entertain, is to reflect the realities of children’s lives. “It’s a good way to get that message through without going, ‘The world is so dangerous. Don’t do this, don’t do that,’” he says. “Because I don’t think kids hear that. You give them room to work out their own conclusions. That’s a better way of teaching lessons.”
The show uses a mix of live action and animation to help interpret situations characters find themselves exposed to. Some of them see in cartoons, others in 1940s film noir, while one girl, a wannabe dancer, sees characters dancing instead of fighting.
The young cast, some of whom were found during an open casting call for people with no acting experience, echoes what Maddocks says.
“It manages to cover different themes while also being funny,” says Seyi Andes-Pelumi, who plays Liccle Bit’s friend Rapid.
Another young cast member, Noah Cox, who plays McKay in his first TV role, says: “It’s realistic, like people can relate to it.”
At the real-life school in Burmantofts where the series is filmed, 70% of the children speak English as a second language. It is in the most deprived ward in Leeds and one of the most deprived in England. For the children here, the themes are a reality. Liccle Bit’s multigenerational household, with a busy mother working to keep a roof over the family’s head, is normal.
“Life is about choices, and if you make the wrong choice, it might come back to haunt you,” Liccle Bit says in the trailer, as we see the character offered money to do a favour for a gangster.
Kelle Bryan, who rose to fame in the girl group Eternal, plays a family member of Liccle Bit’s, and says she was drawn to the show because of its potential to make a difference. “I took the job because I’m an advocate for social change and I really think this job is at the forefront of that,” she says. “These stories are critical for instigating change and getting in at a point where we can make those changes.
“I think by the time they’ve got to 18, we’ve lost our young people. And the time we influence them is at the beginning of things – so while they’re at school, while they’re in education – and we’ve got more adult control at those points where parentally you’re in control of the dos and don’ts, where we’ve got more of a say in what that child can and can’t do.
“I think programmes like Crongton really seep into the psyche of younger people, especially at that critical stage, at 12 or 13, where it’s pre-adult and they’re starting to make decisions that can take their life in one direction or another.”
Bryan works with different knife-crime charities, including the Ben Kinsella Trust, named after a 16-year-old Islington boy who was stabbed to death by older teenagers in an unprovoked attack in 2008. The charity, set up by his sister Brooke Kinsella, the EastEnders actor, campaigns to end knife crime in the UK, a problem that is increasing.
Bryan says it is “vital” that stories like this are being told. “There isn’t anything like it at the moment on television,” she says. “It’s got real credible heart to it. It’s told truthfully, so it’s not been sterilised for television.”
She says the show harnesses the “adult voice” in young people’s heads, “where you kind of go ‘Mum wouldn’t like it if I was doing this, but I’m gonna do it anyway’.
“He makes one decision. And he ends up down this pathway. And then when you look back on it, you can see it started then. This is how we ended up here. And that’s what’s important for children to see.”
It is not an abstract story for Bryan. Her cousin was also killed in a knife crime. “He went to the shop to pick up the takeaway – it wasn’t even a chicken shop because chicken shops are stereotypically where black people are supposed to hang out, and I’m absolutely against that stereotype – so he’d gone to collect his takeaway, and he never came home,” she says.
“He was a teen that never came home. I’m a living witness of the after-effects that have plagued that family and are still plaguing it today. Whatever I can do to shed light and change the narrative, I’m on board.”
• Crongton is on BBC iPlayer now.
