Adolescence Review: Netflix’s Brutal Intensity and Ruthless Realism Series
There are series that entertain and series that strike, leaving a lasting mark on the viewer. Adolescence, the new crime miniseries of Netflix directed by Philip Barantini (Boiling Point), belongs to the second category. Structured in four episodes shot entirely in sequence, the series is a hypnotic experience, a total immersion in a familiar and judicial drama that challenges such conventions. The cast is led by Stephen Graham, Ashley Walters, Erin Doherty, and the surprising newcomer, Owen Cooper, interpreter of Jamie, a thirteen-year-old accused of a ruthless crime. With bare staging and hyper-realistic aesthetics, Adolescence does not just tell a case of crime news: it explores the contradictions of justice, the weight of social expectations, and the dangers of a digital world in which bullying and misogyny can turn into lethal weapons. How difficult is it to be a parent nowadays? One is continually overwhelmed by the doubt that he has done the right thing, that he has reacted most correctly, that he has raised his voice too much or has not done it enough.
Raising a child correctly is not easy, nor is it enough to follow an instruction manual to do so. But what happens when your child makes a mistake from which there is no going back? How do you deal with a tragedy, and whose responsibility is it? Children or parents? This is exactly what he talks about Adolescence, the new four-episode Netflix miniseries conceived, written and interpreted by the English actor Stephen Graham that in this title gives us a wonderful story and an extraordinary interpretation wearing the role of a dad who must discover, face and accept the fact that his son, only thirteen years old, has been accused of the murder of a teenager. In Adolescence, after routine medical withdrawals and the arrival of the office defense attorney, the family is informed of the charges and an interrogation in which investigators face Jamie, who continues to proclaim himself innocent, of apparently overwhelming evidence. It will be the beginning of a drama with unpredictable consequences…
Adolescence Review: The Story Plot
The story begins with a raid: at dawn, inspectors Bascombe (Ashley Walters) and Frank (Faye Marsay) raid the Miller family home to arrest Jamie (Owen Cooper), under the astonished and helpless gaze of his parents, Eddie (Stephen Graham) and Mandaase (Christine Tremarco), and older sister Lisa (The accusation is chilling: Jamie would have killed his schoolmate Katie with a series of stab wounds. The first episode develops in an uninterrupted flow of tension, following Jamie from his home to the police station, between close questions, invasive forensic reliefs, and the sense of unreality that envelops the whole family. In subsequent episodes, the narrative expands: we see investigators gathering testimonies among Jamie’s classmates, psychologist Briony Ariston (Erin Doherty) conducting a crucial report on the boy, and, finally, the devastating impact of the incident on the life of the Millers.
Adolescence Review And Analysis
Adolescence is a series that, more than talking about teenagers, talks about parents and shows with sensitivity and a great visual impact how complicated it is to raise a child in this world and make him become a decent person. This series lays bare not only the fragility of a generation of children but also of parents continually tested by a society based on continuous confrontation with others, on appearances, on having to be necessarily the best, the most beautiful, the strongest. This series examines the contradictions, actions, and mental mechanisms of both being adolescents and being parents nowadays and does so with an audacity that displaces and a sensitivity that moves. The narration flows smoothly but always takes the space and time necessary to get to the bottom in the psychological analysis of its characters. Each episode is a small work of art thanks to a surprising direction in sequence that immerses viewers even more in history and gives a very deep emotional experience. Remarkable are the performances of its protagonists, starting from Stephen Graham, while behind this TV series, in the role of a father destroyed up to that of the very young and at times disturbing Owen Cooper, in those of a disturbed thirteen-year-old.
Adolescence means taking a very intense emotional journey, facing fears, doubting, experiencing contrasting emotions, getting to the bottom but at the same time experiencing, even if through a fiction story, of life, the real one. Because, yes, this series enters, overwhelms, and confirms from start to finish a small serial masterpiece of what we rarely find on streaming platforms. To make a difference, after all, you have to have courage, and Adolescence has this courage from start to finish. Enjoy the wonder of this story even if it will leave you emotionally destroyed. Turn each episode into a single sequence plan; it is not just an aesthetic choice but a declaration of intent. Philip Barantini and the director of photography, Matthew Lewis, use this technique to cancel the distance between the viewer and the story, making us participate in every detail, every embarrassing silence, every gaze full of tension. The camera becomes an invisible witness that creeps into the school corridors, the police station cubicles, and the cells of the juvenile detention center. If in some productions, this choice might seem like an exercise in style, in Adolescence, visual continuity amplifies the sense of claustrophobia and impotence of the characters.
Adolescence success largely depends on the performance of its young protagonist. Owen Cooper, in his first role, offers an interpretation that challenges expectations: his Jamie is both fragile and ambiguous, an innocent-looking boy who could be both the victim of a tragic mistake and a skilled manipulator. The pinnacle of his interpretation is reached in the third episode, a close confrontation with the psychologist played by Erin Doherty. The two actors create a tense and multifaceted psychological duel, in which words become weapons and silence a battlefield. The Cooper’s ability to move from one emotion to another with imperceptible variations of expression makes every moment of its performance unpredictable and deeply disturbing. Beyond judicial intrigue, Adolescence deals with burning issues. Jamie’s case is not just a mystery to solve but the reflection of a generation grown up among online bullying, violent content, and toxic male models. Andrew Tate’s name is explicitly mentioned in one episode, suggesting how much the influence of certain “gurus” of toxic virility can have a devastating impact on young males. The series does not offer easy solutions but highlights a disturbing reality: the culture of violence and dehumanization, amplified by social media, can transform adolescent anger into tragedy.
Female figures, such as the victim Katie and her friend Jade (Fatima Bojang), are also deliberately left on the margins of the narrative, a choice that emphasizes the injustice of a system that often neglects young women, even after their death. Adolescence is not a conventional crime series. There are no easy twists and turns, nor breathtaking investigations, but a slow and suffocating journey through a tragedy that seems all too plausible. The impeccable direction, the extraordinary interpretations, and the narrative choice of the sequence plan make this series a successful experiment and a punch in the stomach for the viewer. It is not a light or consoling vision, but it is precisely this that makes it so powerful: it forces us to face a reality that we often prefer to ignore. And when the credits flow on the last episode, a question remains suspended in the air: how much do we know our children?
There are many TV series that have made extensive use of the sequence plan. Many memorable titles, such as True Detective, X-Files, Boardwalk Empire – just to make some titles – and many, many others. But it is quite unusual that an entire miniseries be turned with this visual and narrative tool. The same that the great Alfred Hitchcock used to shoot all his film Node alla gola, which every Cinema student learned by heart. Adolescence does the same thing: he tells us the story of a murder in a single, long, engaging sequence plane, i.e., without mounting brackets. So, we follow the action as if we were “live”, and we witness all the moments when the machine follows the characters to increase the impression of movement and cut every dead time. To do it, stay there, inside that room with the characters, as if we were there too. As if we were present. There are machine movements and circular and semi-circular panoramas, useful to keep the sequence plane active to keep us immersed in the situation, without giving us breath, and to show us the reactions of all present while the shot tightens on the faces of the various characters in the most relevant moments.
But there is also much more: nothing has spared us. While Jamie undergoes the corporal search, the camera frames his father’s first floor, which tries not to give in to despair to give courage to his son. We hear the voice of the attendant telling Jamie what to do, and then when he took all his clothes, wrapped as evidence, and handed him new clothes, Jamie is accompanied to the next room to finally speak with his lawyer in the presence of the father. We follow the moment of the blood sample, which frightens Jamie so much. As I said, we are not spared anything. But one thing is clear: when we see Jamie’s fragility, his tears, his fear, we are led to be on his side. His looks like a family of good people, we come emotionally approach them and their child – because he is a baby, in front of thirteen-year-olds who look like adults – because we still don’t know anything about the victim. We just start to guess something as the narration continues, but our point of view initially coincides with that of Jaime’s father. We are with him there, worried about his baby. But we are also super partes spectators… And we know the police do not arrest a child without overwhelming evidence. Not like that. Everything takes place, as the sequence plan tells us, in real time. With the times of reality. To make us live all that both Jamie and his family and investigators live. Then Jamie cries. Again. But this time, it doesn’t hurt us anymore.
There are two things particularly relevant in Adolescence. The first is all the psychological implications – of which I don’t talk to you to avoid spoilers – of the story. A family like many, simple, “normal”, which finds itself catapulted into the worst nightmare imaginable. And the family that will never get out of that nightmare. Jamie Miller is frighteningly good, but he’s not the only one. The whole cast gives its best, involving us to the point of doing it jump, move, anger. Adolescence snatches our hearts. It tells us how parents don’t know their children. Like nobody knows others. The second element of great interest is that which Adolescence unites into a very different TV series (not a miniseries) Happy Face, which we told you about here (always without spoilers): attention to the family of those arrested for murder, and not only for the victim’s family. The way an arrest distorts the lives of ordinary people, who could be our neighbors, our relatives. The faults of the fathers fall on the children, just as the faults of the children fall on the fathers: whether it is right or not, whether it is correct or not, whether it corresponds to the procedural truth or not, this is the society in which we live.
Adolescence tells us with all its complexities, its injustices, its danger. We live in times when everything – from school to work, from intimacy to health – is conditioned by social media. Relationships, stages of growth, education: everything has changed and Adolescence summarizes us as. For those who remember – or grew up there – the world without the internet and smartphones, Adolescence is a kind of foray into a reality as frightening as it is likely. For those who were born with the internet, it will be the representation of experiences and social dynamics that are all too familiar. For this, it would go unseen in one breath – it’s only 4 episodes; for TV series fans, it’s almost like seeing a long movie. It should be seen and studied at the same time, with an attempt to immerse oneself in the meaning of each sequence and each stylistic and narrative choice. Why any word, even the most insignificant dialogues, as well as any shot, helps to leverage our feelings, our emotion, pushing us to reflect on today’s world, on how Adolescence‘s story could concern each of us, on one side or the other of the barricade. Without ever lowering the tension, just like real life does with us.
Every single episode drags us in a different context: the first follows the stages of arrest and the practices in the barracks, the second takes place between the classrooms where everyone knew – or perhaps not – the third is set in the reformatory and the last begins within those walls of the house where it all started. It’s not about spoilers as the story puts relatively clear things from its premise, with the twist at the end of the forerunner who leaves few spaces for potential doubts. The room often follows the characters from behind to move, even suddenly, the point of view, relying here and there on drone shots when a more or less short shift is needed. The direction is dynamic at the right point, making the best use of off-screen characters who are witnessing the scene, and is also doing well in the action sequence of the chase between the corridors and the surroundings of the institute. And what about the interview with the psychologist? Voltage at the highest levels, with the gaze that does not give up for a moment the two main characters and that one room as an almost total setting of a tight verbal showdown, showing off the crystalline talent of the very young Owen Cooper, on his absolute debut.
Between analysis on a modern and increasingly uncertain youth, victim and guilty at the same time, and parental guilt about the alleged mistakes made in raising a child, Adolescence has its specific dramatic weight, which knows how to be the bearer of messages without sacrificing solid entertainment committed, leading the viewer to identify himself in the tragedy experienced by the protagonists, without judging or moralizing for free. Adolescence is not just a psychological mystery; it is an immersion in the contradictions of today’s youth. The miniseries don’t focus so much on the question “Who killed Katie?” as on “What is behind that gesture?” Screenwriters Graham and Thorne and director Philip Barantini highlight a world where young people destroy themselves, where bullying, both online and live, and the toxic influence of social networks shape twisted and dangerous mentalities. The focus of the narrative is the young Jamie, who has to deal with a reality that is too hard for his age. The setting is bare and raw, and the images of the police, the youth detention center and even the school – described in almost literal language, with comments that wink at the most disgusting side of reality (such as when you hear that the air tastes like “vomiting, cabbage and masturbation”) – create an oppressive, almost claustrobic atmosphere.
One of the most innovative aspects of Adolescence is the choice to shoot each episode in a single continuous shot. This technique, reminiscent of live theater, forces you to live every moment without interruption. There is no editing that helps you jump from one scene to another; you are there, in real time, to feel the tension rising and to confront the silences full of meaning. This approach gives the miniseries an immediacy that makes it truly compelling, despite some excess of explicit dialogues aimed at “explaining” what happened off the pitch. Sometimes, the continuous flow of information slows down the rhythm and makes you want the narration to leave more room for the imagination. But in the end, the advantage of this technique lies in making you feel an integral part of the drama.
The characters are the beating heart of Adolescence. Eddie, the father, is a man who, in an attempt to protect his son and understand Jamie’s unexpected behavior, finds himself dealing with his fears and disappointments. Mandy, the mother, represents the inability to find a fixed point in a world where even the family, considered the core of security, crumbles under the weight of a crime that seems to belong to another dimension. Investigators Luke Bascombe (Ashley Walters) and Misha Frank (Faye Marsay offer a gloomy perspective on the justice system, showing how reality often lacks clear and simple answers. And then there is Briony Ariston (Erin Doherty), the social worker who confronts the consequences of a toxic culture, highlighting how the way young people perceive sexuality and relationships has been defaced by influencers and distorted messages. Owen Cooper, in the role of Jamie, is a real stroke of genius. His ability to move from the vulnerability of a terrified child to the swagger of a teenager marked by toxic ideologies is truly disturbing. Its interpretation makes you feel the weight of every choice, of every misstep, leaving you with a feeling of restlessness that persists even after the vision.
The dialogues of Adolescence don’t hide anything. Conversations are direct, often brutal, and characters are not afraid to say what they think, even if it means making explicit the pain, confusion, and anger that torment them. This frankness, if on the one hand pays homage to the ruthless reality of the world of youth, on the other hand tends to expose information in a slightly too didactic way. Info-dumping, as they call it, makes you think that the authors are afraid of not making you fully understand the context without explicit explanations. Despite this, the strength of dialogue lies in the way it captures the despair and fragility of a generation that finds itself having to navigate insidious waters, where the adult has lost contact with the young person and where society, online and offline, exerts unstoppable pressure.
Adolescence struck me for its intensity and for the ability to make you live every moment as if you were there, at the center of the drama. The one-shot technique gives the story a freshness and immediate immersion that are rarely encountered in the panorama of modern miniseries. The topics addressed – bullying, the lack of communication between generations, the toxicity of social networks, and the inability of adults to understand young people – are current and deeply shake you. However, not everything shines. The dialogues at times too explicit and the rhythm that slows down to explain every detail, make the miniseries feel a little’ forced, as if trying to cover empty spaces with information that weighs down the narration. The frankness of the characters, despite being a strength, sometimes appears as a way to compensate for the lack of emotional depth.
I don’t deny that Adolescence is a terrifying and disturbing vision, capable of making you doubt every preconception about youth and of showing you, in all harsh reality, how violence and pain are an integral part of growth in the modern world. I found it intense and engaging, with an emotional impact that does not leave you indifferent, even if some narrative choices are excessively explanatory. If you are looking for a miniseries that will bring you to your knees, that will make you reflect, and that you will be capturing from the first moment, Adolescence is the one for you. If, instead, you prefer softer narration, without all that emotional weight and that raw reality, here you will not find what you are looking for. Personally, it struck me for the courage to face such uncomfortable issues, and I advise you to give it a chance, with the awareness that it will leave you with many questions and, perhaps, with some thrills along your back.
Adolescence Review: The Last Words
Adolescence explores the drama of young people with brutal intensity and ruthless realism. An immersive and disturbing miniseries that challenges the perception of Adolescence in a world dominated by confusion and violence. When a thirteen-year-old is accused of a horrible crime, his family finds it hard to believe the police version, however overwhelming the evidence is. The immediate aftermath and a few months later from that dramatic day characterize this British miniseries full of ideas, with each episode shot in a single sequence plan and ready to drag us into the consequences of the crime. Not only on what happens to the actual culprit but also to the people closest to him. They are also victims of a society that does not make allowances, where bullying among young people is only the first seed of hatred, ready to be reflected in an increasingly lost adult society. An excellent cast, a courageous and extremely functional stylistic choice (each episode is a long sequence plan, a choice that requires one great attention to every detail or is one practically perfect acting, and Adolescence has both). Telling us everything “in real time”, limiting itself to gods time jumps between one episode and another, while we witness live a sort of compendium on today’s world. Between those involved in terrible news and those who judge it from behind a keyboard or a spray can.
Cast: Stephen Graham, Ashley Walters, Erin Doherty, Owen Cooper, Faye Marsay, Christine Tremarco, Mark Stanley, Jo Hartley, Amélie Pease
Created By: Jack Thorne, Stephen Graham
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4/5 (Four Stars)
Adolescence Review: Netflix’s Brutal Intensity and Ruthless Realism Series | Filmyhype
Director: Jack Thorne, Stephen Graham
Date Created: 2025-03-13 13:34
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Pros
- Real-time storytelling that offers an immersive and intense experience
- Raw deepening of the themes of bullying, isolation and youth violence
- A solid direction that manages the sequence plans with confidence.
- Intense script that digs with the right depth in the drama of the characters.
- Magnetic interpretations of the cast, above all Stephen Graham and the newcomer Owen Cooper.
Cons
- Info-dumping that affects the balance of narrative tension
- The shooting style was not actually necessary, but it cannot be said to be a real flaw.
