There’s a belief among a lot of people that some of the best of TV is produced in the United Kingdom and I would have to agree. Look at The Office, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, The Benny Hill Show, Fawlty Towers, and even Duckula.
Maybe it’s because the Brits don’t waste our time with fluff and dragging out stories. The Office only ran for 14 episodes and Fawlty Towers ran for 12 episodes. Even The Honeymooners ran longer than that at 39 episodes.
Adolescence is divided in four parts and its less than four hours in total length. But the series manages to tell an effective story from several point of views to get us involved with many characters. Created and written by Jack Thorn and Stephen Graham who also appears on screen in a main role, it’s about a community dealing with an incident in which a teenage girl, Katie Leonard (Emilia Holliday) was killed by a fellow classmate, Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper).
But there really is no main character or protagonist. Graham plays Jamie’s father, Eddie, a blue-collar worker who is a loving dad but you can sense at first something is off between their relationship. Cooper gives a great performance where at first he comes off as a weak fragile 13-year-old boy but you see him change before our eyes.
Each episodes is filmed within one continuous take without any cuts. Reportedly, the cast and crew rehearsed and blocked each episode effectively and shot each episode 10 times over several days with two takes a day. For the way each episode is written this is necessary. It’s not just a technical issue. It shows how quickly things can unravel but also how a subject like this can be complicated.
The first episode involves the police arresting Jamie and taking him to the station where he is interrogated by police detectives Luke Bascombe (Ashley Walters) and Misha Frank (Faye Marsay). They arrest Jamie early in the morning just after 6 a.m. and the Millers household is plunged into confused chaos as Eddie, his wife, Manda (Christine Tremarco) and their daughter, Lisa (Amelie Pease) has their lives suddenly changed.
This isn’t really a whodunit as it becomes apparent at the end of the episode as security camera footage has caught Jamie attacking Katie. This is a show that is mostly based on acting even though the continuous takes add to the tone. Upon realizing that his son might be a killer, Eddie at first is disgusted as Jamie seeks his attention. They say a lot of communication is non-verbal, well so is acting.
Graham started out mostly in supporting roles. One of those was in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. And it’s a good thing he got the experience as Scorsese later cast him as Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano, a Mafia Teamster who beefed with Jimmy Hoffa Sr. in The Irishman. Eddie is a blue-collar worker which bulging biceps. Yet, he has to contend with being a loving and caring family man in an environment where men aren’t expected to show emotion.
Graham said he wrote the series in a response to the recent murder cases of teenage girls in the United Kingdom by young teenage boys. He and Thorne said there has been a growing animosity against women in the online community which is called the “manosphere” and the influence of Andrew Tate. The series hints at the notion that Jamie may have had homosexual thoughts and ideas.
During an interaction between Eddie and Manda, Eddie recounts how Jamie wasn’t as skilled with sport abilities as his peers and how the fathers laughed at Jamie. When the police question school students days after Katie’s murder, her friend, Jade (Faitma Bojang), assaults a friend of Jamie’s, Ryan Kowalska (Kaine Davis), during a fire drill. Ryan is made fun of by the other male students.
Bascombe, himself, has an estranged son, Adam (Amari Bacchus), who is a classmate of both Jamie and Katie. Adam says there was a cyberbullying case against Jamie by Katie and others saying he was an “InCel” which means involuntarily celibate. I don’t want to reveal more because the show is so well made it’s worth watching as the story unfolds. Even though she only appears in the third episode, Erin Doherty knocks it out of the park as Briony Ariston, a forensic psychologist who questions Jamie. You can see that Briony really cares for Jamie and might actually hope it all isn’t real.
It’s no wonder so many of the people who made this have been nominated for Primetime Emmys. There’s something touching about how Eddie puts Jamie’s teddy bear on his son’s bed and tucks it in. How are men really to behave and why does it matter? Eddie drops the F-bomb like a sailor and blows up at some kids taunting him but how are men supposed to respond. A lot of men say they would have done the exact same thing or worse.
But after he calms down, Eddie takes Manda’s purse and the plant she has just bought and puts them in his van while telling them to get in as it’s time to go home. Even though Jade pretty much jumps Ryan, how would people responded if the roles were reversed? Is it a double or just how unfair life is sometimes?
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 