Some mention of this show in “Series you …” thread but I really would love to read some discussion about it.
The no spoilers synopsis: watch it. Strongly recommended. Technically amazing. Acting superb. NOT a light feel good fluff.
I saw Stephen Graham on The Graham Norton Show a few weeks back and he was talking about this show. The idea of Graham exploring the effect of the “manosphere” on young teens really intrigued me. One, because I’ve loved Graham in everything he’s done and two because he’s a super manly-man and I love the idea of him taking on this topic.
I’ve only managed to see the first two episodes so far. I wish I hadn’t started the show at 8 PM on a Thursday because it took all my might to turn it off to go to bed!
The last shot of episode two - hand-cam to drone-cam to hand-cam - was amazing!
All the scenes with Graham have been amazing so far. He is basically acting with his jaw muscles!
I’ll be back here Saturday once I’ve finished the show.
I’m back! I watched the last two episodes as soon as I could after work.
Cinematography, acting and writing were all amazing.
The overall story I’m sort of torn on. But I think that’s because I’m a mystery fan and every mystery has a resolution.
This story isn’t about the resolution. It’s all about the why. And not the why of the moment but a couple generations of why.
I was hoping there’d be much more depth to the discussion of teens and incels. I don’t think there was enough of that.
The answer you come away with is being a kid is hard. Being a parent is hard. Things can go real bad real quick.
But the cinematography, acting and writing sort of overcomes all that and leaves you with a gut punch.
I think this would be a very different story if it was set in the US.
I preferred the lack of discussion about it. It was more show not say and questions more than answers. And there are no simple answers.
That applies to the bigger questions about parenting, about bullying, about boys and girls being impacted by toxic social media messages about behavior, including but not only “the manosphere” … to the rest of the story about pretty much every character and relationship.
Yeah I see a very different story set in the US. FWIW I loved the cop yelling at the kid he was chasing to be careful running across the street.
I thought that one of the smartest things about the writing was how it subverted all your expectations of what it was actually about. First it seemed to be the poor innocent being wrongfully accused of a terrible crime. But that was quickly put to bed. And then you keep waiting for the reveal - the terrible history of abuse that the poor kid suffered. The explanation for his awful rage. And there just isn’t any. They are just a normal family and something has gone terribly wrong.
I wonder what the screenwriter was trying to convey with the character of Jade, the schoolgirl who is unremittingly hostile to everyone, even the police who are trying to find out who murdered her best friend.
Is she meant to be the female counterpart of Jamie? Or is she meant to show what (some) teachers are up against these days?
Jade may be there to represent kids who don’t have the same type of loving family that Jamie did. They made a point of showing how her mom is not there for her and she has nowhere to go and no one to go to. Her rage turned violent too.
And yeah, the teachers can’t win.
There are several characters with complete backstories and complex characters just hinted at. One theme is how complicated adolescence is. The self loathing some have, the bullying, the desire for approval, the ways in which the self loathing gets turned against others. The bullied who bully in response.
Jade explicitly admits that she feels that her murdered friend was the only person who saw positive in her. Anger as an initial part of grief? Not surprising. She knew enough of the bullying that was done and Jamie’s group to believe that his buddies had minimally been in on it to some degree. And DI Bascombe saying that her best friend was friends with Jamie, a boy at the bottom of the school social strata, was insulting the memory.
Bascombe’s son was a different portrait. A bullied kid who somehow navigates through it, aware but not self loathing, and not desperate for approval enough to put a target on his back. More avoidant as a tactic. And despite a pretty uninvolved father.
Even that smaller kid who is always there with the insults of the kids getting knocked down is a comment and a story of its own.
I wonder most about DS Frank’s teen years. The dynamics in the school seemed pretty triggering for her. Her saying Facebook instead of Instagram? I suspect that wasn’t just adult considering them the same but that she had been bullied on FB at that age.
But hell I am even curious about the police guard with the acne scars clearly crushing on the psychologist Briony.
The other big theme is of course the nightmares of parenthood. Same parents and “we made him” and “her” both. How? Why? The powerlessness we have. And the importance.
FWIW my OP here asking about the female response to the same sorts of pressures that have resulted in the incel movement in males, was provoked by this show.
Katie, the murdered girl, had been humiliated in an attempt to win over a boy she thought she liked. The boy she wanted rejected her. Social media was an impact on her, likely part of her decision to sext and the means of her social degradation with her body being shamed. She turned to bullying someone else beneath her in response, using incel ideology as a means of attack, ironically pushing a lower social strata boy further into the incel mindset, as much as he still denied such even to himself.
There are similarities there in the mindsets. The manifestations in responses different. The boy resorted to physical violence in his attack back at a representative of the other gender, the girl with cyber bullying that got her likes.
Which made me wonder how those similarities and differences which begin in childhood play out into adulthood as well.
This show has caused a lot of anger on Twitter. There are a bunch of men who see it as propaganda against them, in a culture where white men are freely blamed for problems while excuses are made for other demographic groups. They are angry that the government is now talking about taking action based on a fictional crime, when they have ignored or tiptoed around the causes of very real ones (eg the teen knife crime epidemic and the grooming gangs). And they believe the response will be to double down on the biggest reason young men are becoming radicalised: the pathologization of masculinity, in schools and in society in general.
IMO, the programme has intensified their feeling that popular culture is controlled by people who are very different from them and do not represent them at all, and made them feel all the more disenfranchised as the country changes for the worse around them. Whatever its merits as television, I’m not convinced it’s going to result in beneficial social change.
Did you see the series?
My WAG is that most of that “bunch” in your section of the Twitterverse did not.
I am sure that the incel community condemns this show sight unseen.
What is your review?
I finally finished watching Adolescence after a few starts and stops. I felt that the first and third episodes were the hardest to watch, although the final family outing episode hits home too. Great editing and set designs; I felt like I was there. (And I loved the scar-faced police sergeant for some reason.)
Was the incel plot a statement about society and social media? Or was it the series’ macguffin, being just a reason for the story to exist? I was surprised they went there. Like others have said, it would be different if set in the US.
The kid playing Jamie was great, especially the “bark” in the third episode. I rewound it to watch the scare jump, and it got me on every viewing. I hope the actor gets major recognition when awards season comes around.
I got to thinking about how some of the episodes could be stand-alone stories. The first episode could run almost as-is, and I would be satisfied with a bumper tag saying how a trial went. The third episode could have be an episode of In Treatment (like S1.3 with Mia Wasikowska), just a teenager finally having someone to talk with. The final episode strangely made me think of The Sopranos, but with a family dealing with criminality, this time with guilt. Or maybe I’m saying I don’t want a whole another season two. Yet.
That is about the most insane take I can imagine. Internet incel culture is attacked for sure, but that’s like attacking the KKK - no moral person should object to criticizing the Andrew Tates of the world (who is indeed indirectly called out by name). Cyber-bullying is also implicitly criticized, but again - so? Shouldn’t we? Race conflict really doesn’t enter the show in any substantive way at all.
I agree with DSeid. I have my doubts any of the critics actually watched it. If they did and still drew those conclusions…well..they’re delusional whackadoos. Or Andrew Tate fans, which is the same thing.
Isn’t the whole point that it’s not edited?
Here’s a video from Netflix with Owen Cooper (Jamie) and Erin Doherty (Briony, the psychologist) watching and commenting on episode 3.
It had 9 editors.
So I get what sound editors do with a continuous take, but what is the role of say “in line editor” with it?
Thought the acting, story, and subject matter were great. I did find the one-shot unnecessary and sometimes distracting. I don’t think it added much to it overall. Long uninterrupted shots can be effective but you don’t have to run a full hour like that just to stay consistent with the gimmick.
Coincidentally I received this link today, someone with exactly the opposite view.
3 reasons why Adolescence’s one-shot approach works brilliantly
I’d have to semi disagree with their points.
“Single takes both liberate and challenges actors”. True. And extended uncut scenes can be excellent and powerful such as Jamie and the psychologist. But it doesn’t justify having to wander from scene to scene.
“Single takes make the dull interesting”. Sometimes. If it is important to the narrative. Otherwise it can feel forced and feel like filler.
“Single takes encourage a deep sense of location”. Yes, but there are often simpler, quicker, often more effective ways to do so. The sense of place often felt forced or convenient for the story. Making the drive from one place to another a suitable 5 minute jaunt felt out of place.