Adolescence

Adolescence is a crime drama, yes, but one that isn’t about the crime as much as the boy at its centre, the world that shaped him, and the people left reeling in his wake. If you thought it would be a murder mystery, the idea is put to rest at the ending of the first episode itself (it’s a miniseries and features four episodes) when the said mystery is revealed. It is revealed that (spoiler alert, but not really, for the trailer itself let it slip if one watched it closely) Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) did really kill the victim, Katie. No, Adolescence series is more interested in the motive behind the crime, and it is revealed piecemeal in the rest of the three episodes. Like Kareena Kapoor Khan-starrer The Buckingham Murders, Adolescence capably uses its small British town setting to paint a picture of a community simmering with quiet tensions. But while The Buckingham Murders leaned into grief and personal reckoning, Adolescence sharpens its gaze on something far more insidious, which is the slow radicalisation of a young mind through figures like Andrew Tate.

Adolescence confronts the debilitating fear(s) of every parent — where are our children going? Who are they meeting? What kind of conversations are they having? Who or what is influencing them? And the biggest question of them all — what are our children watching? Ever since it dropped exactly a week ago, this Netflix miniseries has taken the world by storm. ‘A perfect piece of television’ is not a descriptor that comes by easily, but Adolescence has earned that in more than a few reviews. On social media, it is being discussed, debated and dissected. Besides the overall impact of this four-episode series, almost every scene, dialogue, body language and more, is being put under the microscope, even as the viewer peels off layers and semi-layers of this crushing yet cathartic watch.

The first part of Adolescence opens with a 13-year-old boy, Jamie (Owen Cooper), being arrested on suspicion of murder. It’s early morning. The family home is raided by the police; DI Luke Bascombe (Ashley Walters) and DS Misha Frank (Faye Marsay) take Jamie to the police station. Jamie tearfully goes through the detainment process. He is strip-searched, his father Eddie (Stephen Graham) agrees to be his ‘appropriate adult’ and a local solicitor arrives to represent Jamie. The two cops then interrogate the boy. For much of this episode, as grown-up viewers, we are wired to watch these proceedings through the lens of one question: Did he do it? At some level, we experience it as an investigative thriller: a murder mystery where the suspense lies in the answer. When Jamie quietly tells his dad that he is innocent, it’s hard not to believe the kid. He sounds truthful. It’s probably all a mistake and he’s protecting a wayward friend or elder. We look at the father as a portrait of complicity, too — closely judging every word, glance and gesture of his. DI Bascombe mentions a previous juvenile case where none of them noticed years of sexual abuse. But the end of the episode shows that Jamie did do it. He brutally stabbed his schoolmate Katie to death in a carpark the previous night. The cops had proof all along. His guilt was never in doubt. There is no confession. The anti-climax lies in the eyes of the beholder.

Netflix should be flexing its UK arm more often. It seems to be doing all the heavy-lifting, especially when it comes to long-form programming. After last year’s One Day and The Gentlemen, Netflix UK has already delivered two stellar new shows this year; incidentally, the same writer is involved with both. Just a few weeks ago, the prolific Jack Thorne spearheaded Toxic Town, a crowd-pleasing drama about social injustice, told from the perspective of the women that were most affected by it. Thorne’s latest is the even better Adolescence, a psychological thriller that he co-created with actor Stephen Graham. It’s only March, but Adolescence, the fascinating examination of masculinity and urban alienation that it reveals itself to be, is already a contender for the best show of the year.

Adolescence opens with a scene of a police officer DI Luke Bascombe (Ashley Walters) dealing with his son over the phone. The boy doesn’t want to go to school because of a bad stomach. When his colleague wonders if he will let him get away with the lame excuse, Luke says, “He knows Tracy (his wife) will say no, and I am a soft touch." The scene kicks off as a cute little moment between two officers and escalates into a volatile arrest sequence of a 13-year-old boy named Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) as DI Luke and his team burst into his house. It takes a while to realise that the shot hasn’t cut ever since the first frame, and it doesn’t till the end of the episode. Adolescence has four episodes, each one done in a single shot, leaving you wondering how few sequences were even done. However, it is not a series that is all about technical excellence. After a while, you tend to forget the single-shot brilliance as the story is even more engrossing, taking you closer to a devastating state of parenting, the school system, and the rise of toxic masculinity.

Co-created by star Stephen Graham and filmmaker Jack Thorne, Adolescence should become necessary viewing at schools for teachers, students, and parents. The four-part series is focused on the arrest of a 13-year-old boy, Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper), accused of stabbing his classmate fatally. The British series deftly captures how this incident affects all those around Jamie—his family, the police, his classmates, and even the psychologist assigned to the case. While the devastating story will leave you emotionally sapped at the end, Adolescence is a stark reminder of the evolving world around us where kids are forced to grow up much too fast.