ADOLESCENCE

UK, 2025, 4x55 minutes, Colour.

Owen Cooper, Stephen Graham, Ashley Walters, Faye Marsay, Christine Tremarco, Amelie Pease, Erin Doherty, Joe Hartley.

Directed by Philip Barantini.

A television series that received immediate worldwide acclaim. It is particularly well cast in the major roles and in so many of the supporting roles, including the children at school. The screenplay has been written by veteran writer, Jack Thorne (Wonder, Radioactive, the Enola Holmes films) who was working on a new version of Golding’s Lord of the Flies at this time. He worked with Stephen Graham who brought the idea to him. The direction is by former actor, Philip Barantini, who worked with Stephen Graham in the striking film, Boiling Point, as well as the television series based on the film.

A striking aspect of the series is that each of the episodes, four, was filmed in a single take. Which gives each episode in extraordinary sense of continuity.

The idea for the series came from actor Stephen Graham, concerned about crimes committed by the young, a serious attempt to probe families, children, school and pressures, situations that lead to anger and violent crime. Each chapter provides a different perspective.

The film opens with the police, strong performance from Ashley Walters as the investigator, the police arriving, bashing their way into a house, alarming the family, arresting a 13-year-old, Jamie Miller. There has been universal acclaim for the performance, first time on screen, by Owen Cooper (who then went on to be young Heathcliff in Emerald Fennell’s version of Wuthering Heights). There is general alarm, the boy protesting that he has done nothing wrong, the upset of the family, Stephen Graham is the father, tensions, Jamie being taken to the police station, the details of classifying him, the cell, the arrival of the sympathetic legal adviser, the decision that his father would be the responsible adult to be present in all interrogations and situations. There is the fingerprinting, the taking of blood, the offer of a meal. Then there is the interrogation by the two police officers, Jamie and some questions but, on the advice of the solicitor, offering “No Comment” about the episode. The hour-long narrative is filmed in real time, the gradual revelation of the case, the death of a fellow student by stabbing in a car park at night, the protest of Jamie, the support of his father, the audience ready to take a step further.

The second episode takes place three days later, the opportunity for the police to go to the school to question various students. There are various rumours at the school, students upset. In fact, the episode shows the difficulties in contemporary schools, some students wanting to learn, other students providing all kinds of upsets and answering back to the teachers, some of the teachers effective, others exasperated by their experiences in the classroom. And, in the middle of the interrogations, the fire alarm goes off, the scene of everybody going out to the open area, the murdered girl’s best friend having a tantrum and attacking one of Jamie’s friends, her having to be counselled by one of the teachers but her angry reaction. The police interrogate Ryan, one of Jamie’s friends, the boy was attacked by the girl in the yard. Later, when he is interrogated again, he makes for a run for it, the police pursuing him and catching him, and admitting that the knife in the killing was his. The officers son is also at the school, tension between them but his explaining to his father various aspects of  Instagram and online bullying, especially for teenagers and issues of celibacy, herself bullying Jamie. These discussions and the effect of photos and texting may be unfamiliar to many of the parent audiences watching the series.

The third episode takes place in real time, a psychologist coming for a second visit or talked with Jamie. It is seven months later. Erin Dougherty gives a very effective performance as the visiting psychologist and Owen Cooper shows even better his abilities as an actor, the verbal interaction between the two, the issues raised, especially about masculinity, sexuality, teenage understandings and lack of understanding, and an opportunity to see Jamie and an eruption of anger. This is a valuable hour in the understanding of a contemporary 13-year-old boy.

There is explicit reference to Andrew Tate and his large social media following, the “manosphere” and the implications of “toxic masculinity”, its being taken up by so many boys and young men, feeling oppressed, finding ways of asserting themselves, even brutally.

The last episode takes place 13 months after the crime. Surprisingly for the audience, the focus is once again on the Miller family whom the audience saw in the first episode. It is the father’s birthday, his wife preparing breakfast, the daughter alarming them with the news that the father’s van, he is a plumber, has been spray-painted with an insult. This changes the dynamic of the day which had meant to be happy, breakfast, going to the pictures, a Chinese meal. The point of this episode is to show the father’s anger, Jamie having mentioned to the counsellor an example of his father erupting. So much of the early part of the episode has the three in the van going to buy paint to respray over the insult, there is a huge revelation of the family dynamic. Some of those who work at the store recognise the father and gossip. He also sees the two young men who spray-painted and angrily attacks them, throwing paint over the side of his van, in a rage. On the return home, there is a wonderfully intimate scene between husband and wife, especially when Jamie rings and announces that he is changing his plea to guilty. Audiences will appreciate the father’s awareness of the cruelty of his own father towards him, his decision to be the opposite, but his own rage influencing his son who has put his father on a pedestal. The guilt of the father in trying to make his son into the stereotype, sports, tough, while his abilities were in art and drawing.

The series does not go back to the police or to the prison. It stays with the father and mother, acknowledging the past, having to live with it, and to build on it.

The crime might be one of an adolescent. But, the adolescent has grown up in a family.