Crongton, review: a zippy new adaptation of Alex Wheatle's Crongton Knights series

Are the kids alright? Definitely not is the feeling gripping the nation after Stephen Graham's Netflix hit Adolescence, which is facing calls to be shown in schools thanks to its galvanising storyline about teenage masculinity in crisis.
Still, not all TV shows about the lives of young boys are entirely intent on depicting modern adolescence as a dystopian nightmare, at least not all of the time, at any rate. Certainly, Crongton, BBC Three's zippy new 10-part adaptation of Alex Wheatle 's YA series Crongton Knights, set on a fictional housing estate and focusing on a frightened 13-year-old boy caught up in a gang revenge plot, feels determined to warm the heart rather than chill the marrow. Where Adolescence offers no easy answers in depicting the mind-warping horror story of online Incel culture, Crongton serves up street violence, parental neglect and the awful loneliness of being a misunderstood teenager in distractingly lovely, pin-balling video game colours and the odd floating heart emoji. And it's mostly brilliant.
It's a tragedy Wheatle, an under-sung YA novelist, never got to see this TV version: he died last week from prostate cancer. Adapted by Archie Maddox, the show notionally devotes each episode to a different teenager at South Crongton Comprehensive, such as Saira, newly arrived from war-torn Syria and Venetia, the daughter of devout Catholic parents still mourning the loss of her cousin to gang violence a year previously, yet determined to flood Crongton with positive vibes.
The overarching story, though, belongs to the diminutive Lemar 'Liccle Bit' Jackson, who lives with his mum, older sister, baby nephew and grandmother in a cramped and noisy flat and who falls under the orbit of local gang leader Manjaro after Manjaro showers him with cash and affection. Soon Liccle Bit is hiding weapons in his bedroom and lying to his friends; it's typical of this show's deft deflection of hardcore reality that when he finally confesses what's going on to his mate Mckay, Mckay initially wants nothing to do with Liccle Bit's 'pickle'.
Crongton feels properly fresh in its kinetic splicing of grimy naturalism with animated cartoon sequences (an estate brawl is depicted in kapow! style graphics) and the frequent screen raid by video game visuals and mobile phone graphics – a sniper's crossfire; a cascade of confetti. Director Ethosheia Hylton cleverly parallels life as imagined or dreamt of for its young protagonists with its harsher or more prosaic reality – Liccle Bit imagines Manjaro as a horror film villain with diabolic red eyes; a fight with neighbouring gang North Crongton takes places with splurge guns a la Bugsy Malone; the somewhat saintly Venetia dances in the playground as though life is one long heartwarming TikTok video. Meanwhile, the comedy is deliciously oddball – Mckay at one point engages in a roast with an evil cackling dinner lady – and at times downright surreal; science-mad teenager Juniper likes to conduct experiments in the school toilets. It's an ingenious use of disorientation, yes, people on the estate might get 'deleted' with alarming frequency, but Crongton also inhabits a tenderised teenage world quivering with giddy, escapist possibility.
Most of the actors are making their TV debut – the producers cast it following a social media open call out – and the approach reaps both rewards and the odd wobble. Yet Samson Agboola sparkles as the baby-faced Liccle Bit, whose features are endearingly wide open and trusting. It's a measure of his performance that he also suggests how quickly Liccle Bit could become another sort of child, had a different path been taken.
Maddox struggles to sustain a coherent panorama of estate life across 10 episodes – chapters devoted to periods or to Saira's experiences in Syria feel a bit shoehorned in – while the gang culture backstory, which involves a murder in a nightclub, conversely feels squashed. But if Adolescence is essential watching for parents, then Crongton is a pretty good equivalent for their offspring: a fizzing drama about choice and responsibility in which the kids might – just might – turn out alright.

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