Five years ago, it was one of London’s roughest areas. Then the middle classes moved in; galleries, cafes and a Sunday market followed – and prices shot up. But not everyone’s happy
A panel of locals enjoys a preview of the Channel 4 drama’s first episode, but finds plenty of flaws in Ronan Bennett’s supposedly realistic portrayal of life in the borough
Ronan Bennett spent two years interviewing gang members in east London for his powerfully personal TV drama, Top Boy. Here he describes their hidden, hopeless world – and the lengths they’ll go to escape from it
The BBC’s decision not to move the production base of its flagship soap to the Games broadcast centre makes the job of filling that space in the long term more difficult
