This show appears to be quite underrated, it might just be me but I feel like it was barely marketed. I saw it on Netflix having never heard of it and was unaware that it had been aired on E4. I would rate this as a very good TV show; it is right up my street as it is a genre that I am very interested in.
The show starts with two friends leaving school and getting their GCSE results. One has his head screwed on and wants to go to college while the other is more streetwise and interested in making it big without further education. Both of them make music together and have dreams of making it big in the industry. They record tracks in Yemi's bedroom at his 'studio'; Jay is rapper whilst Yemi is the producer. Before long they recruit another member to their crew; a female singer – Davina. They then record tracks, send them off to labels and perform at unsigned open mic nights.
The 'mandem on the wall' are also hilarious, although with little screen time they are not used enough in my opinion! It is described as a comedy on IMDb but I would disagree on that, it is a lot more serious than that. Of course it has its funny moments and it does have a certain light hearted feel to it but it is not an outright comedy.
The acting is great, with very strong performances from the two leads (Jay and Yemi), Davina is certainly the weakest of the three but she still does a convincing enough job. The first series is 8 episodes long with each episode just over 20 minutes long. The show highlights the troubles of growing up, mixing business and pleasure and also teenage peer pressure.
The soundtrack also – wow! A real grime/UK urban soundtrack with plenty of snippets of songs in each episode. The songs that the Youngers make are also decent and are realistic enough to believe that this is the type of music they would produce in real life.
The only negative with the show is that is quite predictable and with only having short 20 minute episodes it seems they have tried to fit too much in to them. Relationships change and scenarios can change multiple times within one episode which hinders its opportunity to build any depth to situations.
I haven't seen series two yet but I will certainly be looking out for it and I would recommend this to anyone interested in the grime music industry and UK Urban cinema.
8/10
