BBC's Crongton is a 'celebration of Alex Wheatle's incredible life and powerful stories'

New BBC show Crongton hopes to continue the legacy of the “extraordinarily talented” writer Alex Wheatle, who died of prostate cancer last week, aged 62.

The BBC Three series is an adaptation of Wheatle’s award-winning children’s books which chronicle the lives of teenagers in a thriving, multicultural community on a fictional housing estate called Crongton.

Together, the friends navigate danger and the complexities of everyday life in a city. It is filled with humour, colour and vibrancy, but Crongton also covers tough subjects: gang violence, domestic abuse, grief and social politics.

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Wheatle’s work is influenced by his experiences growing up. He was born in London to Jamaican parents but spent much of his childhood in foster care and a residential children’s home, and faced challenges growing up in Brixton in the 1970s.

Steve McQueen made a film about Wheatle’s life and imprisonment following the Brixton uprising in 1981, as part of the Small Axe anthology. It was while incarcerated that Wheatle discovered a love for literature.

Following Wheatle’s death, his family wrote on social media: “Alex has 26 years of legacy for you to continue and enjoy by reading his novels, watch again the self-titled episode ‘Alex Wheatle’ from the Small Axe TV series and also watch the new upcoming Crongton TV series as he looks over us in spirit.”

Patricia Hidalgo, director at BBC Children’s and Education, said: “We feel incredibly privileged to have worked with Alex on the adaptation of his award-winning Crongton Knights books, whose young characters leap off the page in their vibrant portrayals of the highs and lows of growing up in modern Britain. 

“Alex’s authentic writing tells stories that impact young people’s lives, and with the blessing of his family, we will continue the planned broadcast of Crongton in celebration of Alex’s incredible life and powerful stories that mean so much to so many young people.”

Crongton writer Archie Maddocks said: “Alex Wheatle was a titan. A fighter in realest sense of the word. He fought hard to get his voice heard, be seen, to make his mark. And he did that and more. He created a beautiful Wheatle-verse in his writing and his words affected the lives of thousands.

“I’m so sad he’s gone, but I’m happy that he left a legacy enduring enough to achieve immortality. He really changed the world, and he probably wouldn’t ever of admitted that but really, he knew. RIEP Alex Wheatle. You won’t be forgotten.”

The Big Issue spoke to Maddocks, who also acts as a teacher in the show, about what he hopes young people will take from the series.

This interview was carried out before Alex Wheatle’s death. 

Tell us about Crongton and how you got involved with it. What was the beginning of it for you?

The books were brought to my attention, and I loved them. I met Alex Wheatle, and we got on, and it went from there. Alex is wicked. It was a very happy time coming across those books. I wrote a pilot, and CBBC really liked it. 

It takes everything from a few of the books. Each book is from a different character’s perspective. I really liked that you got to see things from different characters’ points of view. 

In the series, it does a similar thing, where each episode is from a different character’s perspective, or they’re the main point of view, which means the way they interpret the world colours the way the episode is shaped and the visual style of it. 

What was it about their world that you loved?

It was a world that I know well. It’s an authentic world, and it’s an inner city existence. Any kid living in a city in any country can see what these kids are going through, and they can empathise with that. 

I was very clear from the start that I didn’t want it to be this grey, monotone existence. Most times when you see housing estates on TV, they’re really dull and dreary, and everybody knows how much they’re struggling. And it ain’t like that. 

I never grew up on an estate, but all my friends did, and I wanted to be on the blocks with them. There’s always something going on. There’s a cookout. You know your neighbours. They could just walk down and find a friend, and go and play. Bro, that’s a wicked life.

I wanted to get some of the fun and vibrancy which is in the books, but the books tonally are quite different. The books are darker. And I didn’t want to shy away from the darkness, but I didn’t want to put that at the forefront. I wanted joy and happiness to be at the front of it, that existence of being 12 or 13 and the world being so vivid, and there being so many possibilities. That’s what I wanted to showcase as much as I could.

How does Crongton remind you of your own childhood?

I grew up in London. A lot of us grew up without much money. Sometimes there was money, sometimes there wasn’t money. And it was always a case of finding the best of things for whatever situation anyone was in. My two oldest friends were half Lebanese, half Irish, and I had two Bosnian friends. There were Africans, Caribbeans. There was a mixing of cultures and ideologies and religions. It’s always funny to me when people make a point of difference a bad thing, because to me growing up, difference was always a way to understand commonality. 

What do you think you would have thought about Crongton as a kid? 

I think it would have gone: ‘Rah. This is what I understand the world to be.’ Obviously I’d find it funny. I’ve written it.  I think the thing that would appeal to me is seeing people on TV that you don’t often see in a positive way. I think I would find it refreshing.

And I think I’d be proper into the little fantasy elements that are punctuated throughout. And I like to think I would appreciate the exploration of the trickier elements in the show and the way that it’s done without it being lecturing or talking down to kids.

I think that comedy is the best way to explore trickier subjects. Humour makes it a much easier pill to swallow. A lot of times when comedy tries to explore something dark, people pitch it so that it’s mocking that thing. I never wanted to mock anything. I just want to explore what the thing is. I don’t want to put my opinion on it. Because, a lot of times with TV in general, particularly in a lot of children’s shows, I’ve noticed that they underestimate how smart kids are.

Do you feel that we don’t give kids enough credit for being able to navigate those themes, both on screen but also in real life?

Yeah. I’ve got two young kids now, and they see and they hear everything. You can’t keep stuff from them. And I understand the impulse to do that. You want to protect your kid from the horrors of the world, but they are gonna see those horrors eventually. If they ask a question, I will be honest. I may not give all the gory details. I try to give the information in the best way that I can, so that they can form their own opinions and thoughts.

How did you build a sense of fun on set?

The kids were so free and willing to throw themselves into anything. And our director Tosha Hilton did a great job of just bringing together a kind of a sense of playfulness and joy. And in my part when, because I’m in the show as well, we did a lot of ad-libbing in scenes. As the teacher, there was literally about two hours when me and the kids were just ripping each other and having lots of fun from that.

There was an open casting call for Crongton – why do you think that worked so well here? 

We decided to go with the open casting call because the characters in the show have such rawness and authenticity. There’s definitely always a place for kids that have been through the drama school route, but what we wanted were kids that just had something that maybe hadn’t been nurtured yet, but there was just a light in them. 

Every single cast member has this little beacon shining and immediately we went: ‘You’re going to be in the show. You might not be that character that we wanted you to play, but you’re going to be in it.’ There’s a few people that auditioned for other characters. They weren’t quite right for that, but we did end up either writing parts that reflected who they were. I think open casting really helped us to find the little gems.

Do you feel that kids have the power to make real change? 

It feels like they do in the show. Whether that is the truth of the world is a different thing, but I think kids can make real change, maybe not on a macro level, but on a micro level, for sure. And then the micro levels hopefully become macro changes around the world. I think kids are so much more powerful and significant to society than we give them credit for. Sometimes I think if we just gave them the keys, they would sort everything out.

Crongton launches on BBC Three and BBC iPlayer on Monday (24 March).

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