Adolescence

Netflix drama series

Adolescence - TV drama Netflix

Unless you never read or watch TV, you will almost certainly have heard of Adolescence, the new TV drama on Netflix. Unusually, there has been almost no dissent in the reviews - all of them have hailed it as a stunning work.

Why? There are lots of reasons. Firstly, it stars Stephen Graham, who is incapable of putting in a mediocre performance. He plays Eddie Miller, a working class Scouser with a successful plumbing business who lives with his very standard family, wife Manda (Christine Tremarco), teenage daughter Lisa (Amelie Pease), and 13 year-old son Jamie (newcomer Owen Cooper, who is mesmerically watchable.)

Secondly, the script written by Graham and Jack Thorne is directed by Philip Barantini, who directed Boiling Point. His signature is the one shot take. This means that within each episode, the camera never cuts off, with the drama then moving to a different location and take. No, the camera remains fixed or roves, but doesn’t cut until the end of each of the four episodes. This has the effect of making you feel that you are there, immersed, not so much a voyeur as a character standing within the scene, drinking in the action . It also means that everything in the drama has a real time chronology. The latter has the effect of enhancing stress in fraught situations, such as the opening scene, or a long scene where a psychologist interviews Jamie.

The story begins explosively as the police ram down the door of The Millers’ home, bursting in to arrest Jamie. The Millers have, up until then, been a very ordinary household, and so this is an enormous shock to them. As they realise what is happening, they react as any normal family would to such an outrageous intrusion - they are indignant, furious, upset, and convinced that the police have made a mistake. When it becomes clear that Jamie is being arrested, he protests his innocence as do his parents.