Netflix’s Hit One-Shot Show, ‘Adolescence’: The Surprise of the Year?

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Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson.
I'm Rob Mahoney. We have a very special emergency crash together pod for you here on a Tuesday.
We're here to talk to you about a Netflix series that dropped over the weekend, Adolescence. Four episodes, four one-hour episodes dropped over the weekend.
We're going to talk to you about the show. We're going to, at the top of this episode, if you haven't seen Adolescence, but we know some of you sickos click on these episodes and listen to them, even though you haven't seen the thing.
So if you haven't seen it, at the top, we're going to talk about what it is and whether or not Rob and I recommend that you watch it. And then we'll get in, you know, and then maybe you decide to press pause, go watch it, come back and listen for more.
We're going to do all that. Very quickly, I want to mention that this is dropping on a Tuesday.
Tomorrow, Wednesday, we will have not only our White Lotus Episode 5 coverage, but Rob and I are doing a live Q&A at noon Pacific, lunchtime. We sure are.
Will we be bobbing for Pineapples live on air joe can you commit to that um no but what if i brought some of the pineapple high chews that they have here at the office does that count that's you're not even trying the pineapple high chews are the sneaky the best okay so listen severance noon pineapple byo pineapple uh we're gonna do a severance q a live mailbag sort of situation you can send questions in advance to where rob mahoney coincidentally to pineapple bobbing at gmail.com or as always to prestige tv at spotify.com but also we will be answering questions sort of live from the chat inside of uh this q a which you can find on youtube on the ringer tv channel at noon on wednesday uh and then it also will just be there after that so that you can watch it later but why not join us for lunch or i don't know a 3 p.m snack if you're on the east coast or other other time time zones. And then we will have our Severance finale pod up on Thursday night rather than the usual Friday morning.

But then we will be doing another pod at the top of next week to sort of gather your reactions to the finale

and our look ahead to the future.

And we might have some extra bonus stuff on that episode as well.

Joe, that's a lot of pods. That's a lot.
Some stuff. That's some content for your feed.
That's great. We might also be covering the studio.
Don't worry about it. It's a lot.
We're doing fine. We're having a great time here in this content nirvana we find ourselves in.
So let's talk about adolescence. Four episodes on Netflix.
It's one hour each episode. It's a British show.
And the premise is a 13 year old boy is arrested on suspicion of a very serious crime. And we sort of follow the investigation over time from there.
The sort of hook of the show, a reason why it's breaking through in conversation, among other things is the fact that each of these four one-hour episodes are shot as in one shot yeah they're oners and as far as i can tell from behind this like interviews and behind the scenes footage these are actual oners not digitally seemed oners and we'll sort of talk about the extraordinary process yes of making this show we can talk about that um but this is this is a show written by jack thorne who has done a bunch of adaptive ip work that is like hit or miss for me but then a lot of like original work that i find more interesting like he wrote the cursed child uh he wrote the uh for the his dark material series um but then he's also done like This is England and a bunch of other stuff.

And then Stephen Graham, who is one of my favorite actors and is really like doing some interesting stuff with his career right now. There's your Venoms, The Last Dances.
And then there's also this. But he's extraordinary on this show.
So, Rob, what, before we got the text from our producer Justin on Sunday being like, hey, do you guys want to crash an adolescence pod? Yes. You and I both had heard about this show.
Yeah. So.
The word of mouth was exceptionally strong, I would say. You and I both were like, yes, we will, because we have heard nothing but excitement around the show.
So what had you heard that got you excited about the show that made you side text me being like, I want to do this. Do you want to do this, Joe? Sort of thing.
I think it was that it was a surprise that it caught people off guard, that it just kind of popped up on Netflix without a ton of fanfare, despite it being a pretty extravagant production. And so people happen upon this in their feed, try it because maybe they love Stephen Graham, maybe they just are looking for something to watch.
And I think if you don't know what you're getting into, this show can really knock you out. It's pretty heavy emotional territory that they're getting into, as you might guess from the subject matter.
Anytime a child is involved in some sort of serious crime, we're wading into something pretty deep. I think it handles those themes and those ideas about as well as a project like this can.
And I don't know how you feel overall, Joe, but I would say from this, like at a distance, trying to decide, should you watch adolescence or not? I would give it basically my strongest possible recommendation if you have the stomach for some more serious like true to cultural commentary of our real world sorts of themes i think this is a really easy a really easy yes you should watch a recommendation and also just a really easy show to decide whether or not uh you want to watch If you watch the first episode and you like it, that's the show. You know what I mean? Both sort of like stomach churning aspect and also just can I hang with the cadence of this hour shot in one continuous shot.
So we'll talk about all of that. So that's, yeah, we give it our recommendation.
We think you should watch it. If you haven't, press pause, go watch it.
Don't just listen to us. Listen to everyone else who's watching this show and is driving it up the Netflix charts on a daily basis.
I got, so I was over at a friend's house on Thursday night and she said, have you watched adolescence? She's, she's in the biz.

She's like,

have you watched adolescence?

I was like,

no.

She was like,

it's,

she's like,

it's their baby reindeer this year.

It's like how she sort of,

I think that might be disrespectful to the show.

I agree.

But like in terms of how Netflix is thinking,

like this is how we win the,

the mini series category at all the award shows.

Like this is sort of how they're thinking. So she's in like like publicity so that's sort of like how she was characterizing it i agree i think this is way better uh than baby reindeer but just in terms of like a british phenomena show on netflix that comes out of nowhere she was like warning me on the thursday before it dropped on the friday and then friday i get the text from chris, who's like, Joanna, adolescence.
And I was like, oh, no. And then I started hearing from a bunch of other people.
So here we are. So go watch it if you haven't.
If you've already watched it or you are one of those sickos who wants to stay around anyway, I will say this. I want to say if you're one of our beloved sickos who likes to listen to us natter at each other without having watched a thing, that is great.
We welcome you. I will just want to premise the framework of the show for you to help you listen to this.
Four episodes takes place over. It's 13 months is the time span of this from arrest to the end of the the story first episode is the arrest and then the sort of booking of of the child jamie um do we here's the question do we want to tip the hand as to what happens beyond episode one because i feel like where it goes and how surprising this show is and what it wants to tackle to me is part of the thrill of it well i'm presuming anyone listening now oh we're we're spoiler gloves off at this point oh in that case you know what let's just jump straight to the end okay um so episode one is the arrest um episode two they go to the school um basically to try to hunt down where the murder weapon is yep and by by the end of episode one, we have irrefutable proof that this kid has done a murder.
Episode three is essentially a two-hander with this kid and a therapist who is sent in to evaluate him as part of the court case. That's, I think, seven months later.
So it's seven months into the investigation. And then 13 months is the final episode.
And that is the boy's family and how everything is sort of impacting them about a year later is sort of where we leave things. So that's just like the basic framework.
So there's the police station episode, the school episode, the therapist episode, and the family episode is sort of how I'm kind of referencing it as we talk about it.

I want to talk a little bit more about some of the talent behind the show.

Please.

So Stephen Graham, again, who I love. I was at Pub Trivia on Sunday, and at the end of the game, they just put up a random movie on the screen, and it was Snatched, which starts with baby-faced Stephen Graham and Jason Statham and I got so excited.
I know Stephen Graham I think best. I think the role that he did that made the biggest impression on me was I was a big Boardwalk Empire fan.
He played Al Capone on that and I think I didn't connect him to some of his uh work that he had done with uh you know a uk accent and it was one of those that actor is an american moment sort of how i uh remember coming to to steven graham but uh i'm a huge fan of his what's your what's your association with steven graham it's definitely snatched first and foremost although look let's let's put respect on the Venoms' names. Okay.
If we must. If we simply must.
I do think he's had an incredible wide-ranging career in terms of what he can pull off on screen, but the physical presence that he brings to something and brings to something like Snatch and brings to his whole genre of gangster and gangster-adjacent roles that he's played throughout his informs a lot of kind of what is what is priming us to watch him on screen here in adolescence as Eddie where there is the implication throughout a lot of the stages of the story of is this character violent is this an abusive father is this someone who does have an anger problem and we hear a lot more about it than we end up seeing earlier in the stage of the story so we're filling in a lot of the blanks in our minds as to what that looks like and it looks like steven graham a dude who's so jacked he's about to pop out of his polo shirt it's it's hard not to infer some things about that just from that character that actor and they know they know exactly what they're doing in having him in this role the polo is popping well and you say they know exactly what they're doing having this role he is the co-creator of this show and something i wanted to highlight about him is that uh and cr was talking to me about this a little bit like what steven graham has done with he is much better known in the uk than he is here he has like an obe like he is he is a fixture in uk film and television and what he has done um and this is c's point, sort of like with his fame and his juice, I would say, in the last few years, in 2020, he and his wife, who's also an actress and a producer, Hannah Walters, co-founded a production company. And so they've been making projects alongside your Venoms and your other things.
And he sort of started to amass a kind of stable of actors, like Ashley Walters, who plays the lead detective in this, and Aaron Doherty, who plays the therapist in this, were in A Thousand Blows, this period boxer project that he did also this year with his wife. And then the director of this- Here we are complaining multiple podcasts is Stephen Graham.
It's just like, yeah, multiple extravagant productions in one calendar year. No big.
Exactly. The director, um, Philip Barantini, who directed all the episodes, uh, is best known for directing a film called boiling point, which is a one-er it was based on a short film called boiling point, which was a one-er.
And then they did a whole feature film and then a TV series called Boiling Point.

That is set in a kitchen.

So that episode of The Bear, but make it longer and probably more agitating.

But I think, you know, collecting directors that he's worked with before, actors that he likes and works with before.

I was watching an interview he gave where he was like, at this point in my career, I just like to surround myself with, like, people who are good at their jobs and pleasant on set. Yeah.
And, like, that's all I want to do now. And so then this is, like, a passion project of a kind for him, and it was inspired by him, the actor Stephen Graham.
It's inspired twofold. One, it's inspired by him, the actor Stephen Graham, having seen a couple news stories about young men doing horrible crimes, violent murders, and he was deeply troubled by that and thought that that should be the subject of a show.
But also, what it sounds like to me, based on some of the that I that I was looking at was they he was asked to do a oneer project. So first came the idea of we're going to do a project where each episode is one shot.
Yeah. Then what is the subject matter that we want to pair with that? So it's this idea of like what came first? What came first was this idea of like the hook, which is four episodes, one shot.
And I want to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of the Warner concept in a second because I have a lot of complicated thoughts about it. Um, but I do think it's interesting in this Netflix content world, this idea that like a studio, a streamer comes to you and says, hey, what do you got that you can turn into a project where each episode is a one shot? It's a content conduit towards storytelling and art.
I'm not mad about it necessarily. It's very very pragmatic and practical but i thought that that was sort of an interesting element of how this was put together i think there's a lot of ways where that could have gone horribly wrong coloring in the lines that netflix provides you as far as that kind of structure this construction and i i don't i don't feel this way about a lot of one-shot stuff which usually can be overly showy uh pointless just for the point of extravagance and the point of kind of showing off the cinematography with no actual narrative value.
I think the one-shot construction for adolescents specifically brings a lot to the table in terms of the story that they're trying to tell and the impact of how it ultimately hits. There's a couple of different ways in which I think it really, really pays off.
And as you said, we can kind of circle back to some of that stuff but if if they were filling a brief i think mission incredibly accomplished as far as that goes and i think it was really smart to keep it to like four episodes yes um you know it's not a a novel idea for the british model to have a four episode series but it is unusual uh in american uh television and i will say this too if you haven't seen if you've already watched the show and you haven't seen any of the behind the scenes featurettes and footage as far as how they made it, it's remarkable to go back and watch and to read about the process where basically it was like a three week. Yeah.
A segment into every episode. Week one being a rehearsal among just the actors.
Week two being a rehearsal with the cameras involved, which you have to understand are dancing around and moving through people and out windows in a really kinetic way, have to be marked out, have to be staged in their way. And then week three is filming two takes a day for five days.
And so the idea that given the emotional heft of not just what these actors have to execute in terms of hitting their marks and the very delicate staging and everything interlocking in such an integral way to the story you're trying to tell, but also deliver the biggest emotional moment in minute 40 of a take is just a ridiculous ask of this cast. And the fact that everyone is so game for it and so good at it.
Look, Stephen Graham has found a hell of a troop. If this is his troop, I needs to look no further I mean especially since the biggest burden is on this actor Owen Cooper who's oh my god this kid who is incredible uh in the show and and a couple other kids too like you know that there's like several young performers who are asked to do some really heavy lifting emotionally in these episodes.
The idea that, yeah, if you and then you fuck up a line and your beautiful reaction you gave. So those behind the scenes sort of featurettes are incredible to watch.
They used it's usually sort of handheld onto certain cranes and that sort of stuff. But there is one drone.
The flashiest sort of like thing is the end of episode two drone shot which i didn't need but like but let's let's sort of go through like the advantages and disadvantages of damn you're anti-drone this is this is a tough corner for you to be on joe yeah you hate i'm not i'm not actually pro drone but that you love it you love a drone i don't i don't actually love a drone i want to be very clear for everyone listening at home there's a facetious comment i'm and i'm not pro drone but i'm proof that novel loves a drone i'm pro that drone shot i am pro no i mean no i did i wasn't anti that shot it just was it was an ambitious bit of flair yes That I didn't need for the episode to be great, but like doesn't not work.

Yes.

Does that make sense that that does make sense i think the fact that you can go from chase scene into character beat into fly away drone shot into extreme close-up on stephen graham in a one-er format it's just like i've never seen that before and so i'm i'm extremely down for that element of that execution it's dazzling or even just watching them like even inside of the family's home you know a mid-size-ish home with a kind of tight staircase watching the behind the scenes of them handing the camera up the staircase to capture people in the stairs is incredible stuff but yeah

i'm glad you point that out because like the the one or stuff as it relates to a drone shot or flying out the window is naturally sort of arresting and dazzling but how you bank corners in a tight english home does not make sense like geometric sense i have no idea how they pulled it off and um i think that i I don't know. OK, let's talk about it this way.
So Graham said and I love this idea. Stephen Graham said it was his note was I never want the camera to not be following a character.
Yeah, I don't want the camera just wandering hall. So even when we get to the second episode, the police know in the first episode in the police station, we're wandering all around.
But we are given like various sergeants and nurses and stuff like that or a lawyer that like when we go in and out of rooms, we're following that person as they're sort of moving paperwork around or whatever it is they're doing. And so we're always with a human that we like identify as a character that we know in the school are there are teachers and students and stuff like that that we're following around um so i will here's here's here's a one or disadvantage and this is a me problem my brain can't shut off a running commentary of how did they do that how did they do that one how did they get How did they achieve that? Yeah.
Your sense of awe and wonder is overriding your ability to process and enjoy and engage with the show. My infamous, yeah, slack jaw delight.
But yeah, just like my puzzle brain is just sort of like, how did they get the camera to do this? That was most distracting, I would say, in episode one. And then by by episode two even though there's still a lot of movement around the school i was able to kind of let go of it um and then episode three because it is just basically two people in a room for most of that episode then it was just sort of gone um is that something that happens to you that do you get like distracted by sort of thinking about the logistics of how they got the shot or the camera to move that way? Occasionally.
I think in some cases it does, though, facilitate the story as they're trying to present it. I think episode one is a great example where disorientation is very much a part of that process.
And I was so struck in episode one being basically as pure procedural as this show gets, right is arrest to booking to interrogation effectively like that is the process of the episode but for example for something as simple as in any other procedural they're trying to get the code to his phone to jamie's phone to open it to gather evidence in this because of the pov kind of laced one or format you are following person from room to room as they discover like in order to in order to get his phone you do need the code in order to get the code jamie has to give it to you in order for him to agree he has to be first assessed by this nurse and like made fit to make that agreement in the first place and in order to be assessed he has to get his like uh appropriate adult in the room and for then he has to decide is that want to be his mother or his father or this random person like the social worker who's been assigned to him and so you see all of these like very complex systems locking into one another and one thing i thought that chris and andy pointed out on the watch i thought was a great observation about this is you're seeing people at different levels of exposure and like emotional vulnerability all throughout this process right You have the family that's in a state of complete shock in this elaborate system, bumping up against all of these professionals who are mostly trying to do their job competently. And I would say for the most part, quite compassionately, given the circumstances.
And not only that, and this is something I do want to come back to, but like re-watching that episode, because you watch that whole episode, you're pretty sure this kid did it because of i don't know the thumbnail art on the netflix splash page but also just sort of like what are we doing here if this kid didn't do it see i i wasn't that i wasn't that sure until until the end of episode one okay so that i mean that's what they're trying to go for and like I would say when you rewatch it, knowing that those two cops already have seen this video or, you know, the nurse might even, you know, like who knows who all these people who are, the lawyer certainly, and he says this at some point, he's like, they wouldn't have entered your home in that manner and done on this unless

they had really compelling evidence yes so he is like very ready for that video to be you know part of this interrogation he even tries to preempt it and like take a break right before they're about to jump into it knows what's coming right and whereas the father is is blindsided by it but I think that like, um, thinking about those two cops who we meet at the beginning and they're very normal everyday conversation that they have going into this but knowing that they're in for a horrible day because they and and have been because this murder happened the night before so they've been probably like you know they've been working all night. Totally.
Or the nurse saying, I think something like, I hate a juvenile case, me, you know what I mean? Like she knows she's being nice, but nice with this like bit of reserve to it of like, I, you wouldn't be here if there wasn't something seriously wrong going on here. Do you know what I mean? I was really struck by that overall in terms of the way that the working professionals and the cops and everyone in the station does talk to Jamie, as you say, knowing in some regard what he's done or what he's most likely done.
And it's even under those circumstances, like Bascom is not trying to throw the book at him. He is telling him, when we get in there, you should ask for a solicitor.
Like, this is what's going to happen. You should ask for these things these are not just not just reading his rights but explaining him in a more delicate way since he is a scared child regardless of what he's done and all the people who are assessing him it's a lot of like you're such a smart boy you're like you're you're such a good boy it's a lot of mate and love and i understand and i'm sure like i we're gonna get into it as far as like the handling of that that character and that character's place in this story and i very much understand the reads on it i think treating that character with a kind of compassion is a really interesting artistic choice yeah and it's happening across the story and it's happening across the story in a way that i think adolescence has something to say about it.
It has a lot to say about that idea of who these people are and the way that they're made. Are you saying there's been pushback on the show for treating him too kindly? I'm not even saying there's been any pushback other than to say, I think the show itself engages with this idea in the second episode where the show is basically calling itself out for being fundamentally and structurally a story about jamie in a lot of different ways and in particular ds frank misha played by uh famer say who i love and i'm thrilled to see in this role you have this kind of point of conflict between her and bascom where bascom is very very intent on figuring out the why of why Jamie murdered Katie.
And I think Frank doesn't think you ever can know why, which is a reasonable point of view to have in a case like this. But also, it bothers her so much that they're spending so much time trying to get into Jamie's head in a way that probably will render Katie invisible or at least put her aside or at least put her outside the frame.
And I think Bascom's counter to that, that figuring out the why is in its way honoring Katie. I do find that to be a little bit persuasive, but I honestly very much want to hear what you feel about it, Joe.
I feel mixed about it. I wanted to talk, that's in my notes to talk about.
I consider that of my advantage like advantage disadvantage of a oneer and and I will zoom back to some other things this is under I have this under mixed because long form storytelling TV can take you anywhere inside of a story. And that's an advantage of something like, let's say, Broadchurch, where we're inside so many people's homes and so many people's lives.

And... And that's an advantage of something like, let's say, Broadchurch, where we're inside so many people's homes and so many people's lives.
And we're at home with, you know, no spoilers for Broadchurch, but we're at home with the murderers as much as we're at home with the parents who are grieving, you know, the child and stuff like that so um so a disadvantage to sticking so firmly on jamie and jamie's family and something that stephen graham said he was like we really thought it'd be interesting to be with jamie's family in the final episode um is interesting and it's interesting in the advantage of the one or which is you're there in the claustrophobic silences you're there with jamie crying in the van ride to the police station you're there with bryany the therapist as she like stands and wait for the hot chocolate machine to you know deposit all the hot chocolate into the cup you know like, like those narrowing the iris of the story down into this one hour of time is interesting and caused a visceral reaction in me that I feel positively about. I wasn't sure if that moment, again, I also love Faye Marseille, I was not sure if that moment of calling out this thing lampshading essentially what they were doing was satisfied me enough because the disadvantage of being in the present you know we talk about this all the time when we talk about murder shows i know it's which is and it's always a woman or in this case a little girl like the laura Laura Palmer wrapped in plastic, this idea of like,

or Rosie Larson on the killing.

But at least in Laura Palmer,

we get, you know, fire walk with me,

or at least with Rosie Larson in the killing,

we get flashbacks, some flashbacks to her.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And in this case, it's like,

Katie, we know a little bit through her friend that we meet in episode two at the school,

but we don't really know anything about her i'm not mad about it um because i think this is a very interesting story to tell so i'm not like you know it invalidates it to leave it out i'm just not sure that lampshading it like gets them entirely off the hook for doing it i don't i don't think it does either and it's something that even as that conversation is happening in the moment that was what took me out as much as anything it's like oh we have to have this talk about why the show is structured yes exactly why this show is structured the way it is to the extent that i give it a little more leeway on that front i think it's because this show is so deeply unsalacious like it is it is so uninterested in the glamorization of murder or in this i like ripped even like a ripped from the headlines sort of intrigue and so much more interested in the structural factors that lead to things like this and really the way that not just jamie is a kid who has gone so far astray and has so many clear, terrifying problems. But the way that we as a society have failed kids and we have failed their ability to be raised in a normal format and to be able to function as normal adult human beings.
Everything is going off the railroad tracks so fast. And it's like the camera is pointing at the railroad tracks and saying, why is this happening as much as it is the murder itself or anything involved i love that and i i love that um when they talk about the show they the the line that they've been using all the interviews is not this isn't a whodunit but a why done it right and like the fact that the show has no easy answers to your point about like your preconceived notions around a stephen graham type yes the answer isn't oh he was abused by his father that's not the answer the the story they want to present to you is this actually is a fairly like loving normal home um and i think i think that you're all of the you're so bright, you're a smart kid comments was not just them sort of making things in the same way, do you want cornflakes mate like sort of thing, but also to underline like this is a smart kid.

Yeah.

And this is a thing that happened with this smart kid from a loving family.

I do want to say I agree with you that it's not a salacious we're not glamorizing murder we're not doing anything like that but i'm gonna i'm gonna like call it one last advantage of the one or and this is sort of like where i started with the concept as a conduit to story it breaks through the noise of content it does in a way that we talked about a bit with the pit as well right like the pit being the concept is every episode is an hour in one shift they're not doing oneers uh in that hospital but like um there's there's a hook and so i don't know that a very well acted very well written very seriously considered four episode drama about a kid who did a murder would be the thing everyone's buzzing about on a weekend, a Netflix drop, were it not for this other part of it. And so as much as it like, I wish that weren't the case of what we had to do to get really good stories told, like sometimes that is the case.
It is. And if you're going to gonna do it at least do it well in this particular way where it is yes technically impressive but overall i think the one or format and we can talk about this in the context of any of these episodes i would say especially episodes three and four have this advantage where it is just ratcheting up the intensity like every cut when you think about it is like a little bit of a pressure release and so the fact that you never get those pressure releases means every emotion on screen has to work itself out organically over time and that can lead to all sorts of fascinating and terrifying and painful places and i mean even in even in even in one and two to your point yeah even in one and two because we're in such a crowded environment we're cutting away for relief, but sometimes we do move into a less stressful room inside of the police station or inside of the school, though that school is extremely stressful everywhere.
It's just genuinely an awful time to be a teenager. Just an awful, awful time.
And a teacher. Like, all of it is just like...
Although, Mr. Malik, not winning Teacher of the Year anytime soon.
And also the woman who was, I forget the name of the woman who was like leading them around, but like. Mrs.
Fenimore. Her completely ineffective sort of unaware attitude was, okay.
But I want to talk a bit about the sort of sympathy, no sympathy seesaw for Ryan, which I think is sort of meticulously done across the series um and no place better i think than episode three um but owen cooper incredible uh you will see him next as young heathcliff in the ill-advised emerald finnell withering heights oh no co-starring margot robbie and jacob alorty um is it too late to pull him out of that can Can we be his agents? I think we can help him out. I think when that drops, people are going to see him in it and be like, who is that kid? He's great if they didn't already see him in this.
Yeah. So I think he'll come out fine.
I just don't think the project's a good idea. That's another.
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The way that it's rolled out in the first episode. And then we take a break from Jamie and then he comes back in episode three.
But like through this whole thing, I was sure that he had done something. But I wasn't sure, not until you see the video or you like without much provocation at all.
No. You know, we're immediately into a violent, though to your point about salacious, in the distance, slightly grainy stopping.
In a a way that like we are with his father in that moment of this kid who has been so scared who has been whimpering who has been so polite yep um you know who is who seems so bright all this sort of stuff like that um or in episode three which is my favorite episode sort of by far same um the way

that uh aaron doherty's character bryany comes in having seen him already for several sessions yeah

this is their fifth session i think liking him yeah like comes in with a sandwich for him

with you know with banter and she digs into a place that by the end she can't even touch the

Thank you. sandwich for him with you know with banter and she digs into a place that by the end she can't even touch the sandwich that she brought into him she's so perturbed by what has happened here and watching it we are meant to this kid is not i think what's so special about jamie as a character is it's not like, spoilers for primal fear,

it's not like, spoilers for Primal Fear. It's not like Edward Norton in Primal Fear where like a switch flips and you're like, oh my God, this guy has been playing us all along.
No, no. It's like, this is a kid.
Everything he says is real. But if you dig one or two layers under the surface there's something very scary there yeah but not disconnected from the nice kid that you are like feel so bad that he thinks he's the ugliest kid in class or this that or the other thing you know what i mean i think i agree with you on episode three overall being sort of the standout which is really saying something given the other three episodes with i think are tremendous in their own way but the sort of experience of watching this show hitting your brain against itself where like we have seen on tape that he stabbed this girl and like i we know it it's not something a character said it's not a little a little thing to put out there that they going to swerve.
And it turns out he's not actually the killer and the tape was doctored or whatever. It's like, he is the killer.
And yet, you can't help, at least I could not help, but be charmed by him at certain points and to see him as that kid. And it's just like, it is impeccable acting.
It is jackpot casting. It's really threading the needle in finding someone who can be both the kid who pisses himself when the police show up in like whimpering in his bed and also lording over this therapist who's come to to talk to him and evaluate him and to to be not just angry but like it calculatedly intimidating like there are moments where i agree with you it's not it's not a flip switch it's not a angry, but like it calculatedly intimidating.
Like there are moments where I agree with you. It's not, it's not a flip switch.
It's not a switch flip, but ultimately he'll have his freak out moments that are kind of pure anger or pure frustration or him like getting out some kind of boyish young energy and anger. And then when he comes back from them, there's, there is something there that is so dark and It is so like him seizing control of that room and him trying to seize control of their dynamic his dynamic with yet another woman in his life that he wants so desperately to like him and yet he can't get her to admit it in some cases because like professionally she simply cannot yeah Yeah.
Ugh. That episode, episode three, very little happens outside of the room except for this guy at the facility sort of hitting on her, question mark? Is that what's happening? At least kind of chatting her up.
Yeah, chatting her up a bit in a way that is all in the mix of the larger conversation of the show but i was struck by some of the just like tiny pieces of language and again jack thorne has been like a hit or miss writer for me but some of the tiny pieces of language inside of that episode when he says in one of his freaked out, your little head. Yeah.
Right.

And then when he says,

when she waves off the guard and he's like,

Oh,

like a queen.

Right.

There is this like misogynistic language that is not like all women are sluts or what it's not big and obvious.

Yes.

It's little and caked into the very marrow of who,

of who this,

who this kid has become.

Yeah.

Due to the environment that he has sort of found himself in and i think that like i think also the kid curiosity because there's there's jamie who was our perpetrator there's his friend ryan who gave gave him the knife. And he and Ryan have these sort of like echo moments of their interrogation.

Jamie with Bryony and Ryan with Bascom both have this moment where Ryan goes, you were popular, right?

Yeah.

He's kind of like he fixates it on it really quickly.

You were popular, right?

And to Bryony, Jamie goes, oh, you're posh.

And so there's this way in which they're identifying these adults as like there's no way you can understand who i am yeah because you were popular or you're pretty and posh and you can't understand my plight and i'm not even going to give you the opportunity to make this connection with me that i thought was really yes stunning and telling i think the way that jamie locks on to yes those sorts of associations who can understand him and who can't how people communicate with him like he's so enamored with this idea of like oh that's not what normal people say like when i say that i'm ugly you're supposed to reassure me when i say that girls would never be interested in me you're supposed to tell me of course that's not true right and her unwillingness to participate in that is some of what stokes all of the intensity in that scene and what brings out some of the language you're talking about like the queen and the little head and even when he's describing you know what what kind of preempts him murdering katie is some nude photos of her leak out among the school from snapchat and he decides that he wants to like take a pass at her in this moment that she has been embarrassed enough socially exactly that he says she's weak and that therefore she might be more susceptible to his advances and like that idea i just like putting it that way like we hear reiterated over and over again in episode three that it's not about what happened it's about what he thinks it's about it's not what is true it's how he's thinking about things and one area in which this show which very much wants to be a show about masculinity and a story about how how these boys become these boys and how they become the kind of person that would murder a girl yeah it engages very openly in some of the factors that facilitate that right like their their depth online and what they're exposed to on the internet what they're exposed to in these schools we get explicit like andrew tate name checks kind of manosphere mentions overall i thought it was really interesting that they they choose to make jamie not someone who follows all that stuff credulously but someone who has looked at it and said some of this isn't really for me but also ends up parroting other bits of it almost subconsciously accepting it regardless of whether he thinks he's doing it or not i thought like that that's such a great choice that makes it honestly so much more fucking terrifying.

The nuance of episode three of him saying it's fucked up that someone shared these photos of her.

Yes.

But also it put her in a weak position. So I thought that maybe she would go out with me.

Yeah.

To the point where after his like final freak out in episode three to the point where when we get to episode four and we're considering it came to be the moment when he's on the phone he calls his dad it's his dad's 50th birthday he calls his dad and his dad has him on speakerphone because his mom and his sister are in the car and he's talked

to him for a while and then he's like your mom and your sister are here and he's like oh i thought i was just on the phone with you and it like made me go back to like when he picks his adult he picks his dad and his mom is like why didn't he pick me or then later his dad is like it should have been you but like this idea that he's like only my dad will understand me like and you know that's that's a human that can be like a human thing but it also felt like slightly gendered of like i didn't know the women in my family were on this call i thought i was just talking to my dad sort of thing and that was like it just slightly creeped me out in a way that like and then i feel i feel you know at the same time the show just threads the needle really well because i really do feel for this kid and when he like draws a card for his dad and just sort of like man i it had me googling like juvenile murder sentencing uk like what you know what's the future like totally for for this kid because he's done this horrific thing and i'm still like can we come back from this in some way is there a future of any kind for this kid like what what do we do here so i've i have to say like coming out of this it makes me really feel for every parent out there who has a teenager or a near teenager who's having to deal with this because i mean one of the ideas that's kind of throughout adolescence i would say especially in the back half is this idea that his parents are reckoning with at the end and like how how did we make this monster effectively and yet a monster that we are still claiming as our own they're not disowning him they're not pushing him away like he's still their son. And one of the things they talk about is they thought he was safe because he was in his room.
And this idea that the danger has transcended the boundaries of your home, that it is infiltrating, that there really is no way to keep it out other than to try to be more present in their lives, to try to put them on these kind of more constructive paths. And think that's where you get ultimately like the Bascom parallel with his son, Adam, who also is a kid at school who is bullied, who also is kind of a bit of a social outcast.
We hear from the first, the very first episode at the beginning is trying to get out of going to school because he gets bullied all the time. And you see it in action.
Like you see the kids picking on him and it sucks and it's terrible and ultimately you there are a lot of kind of minor parallels between bascom and eddie right they're both they're both like working men who have long hours who come back late who aren't as present in their kids life as they may want to be and yet adam is on this one path and jamie is on this other path and it's such a fine line between them that caught like drawing up any specific causality

would be a failure of judgment it is it's so complex and it's so difficult to assess like why this happens to one kid and not the other and i i appreciate this show trying to at least wrestle with that idea yeah i think i think ending episode two with bascom connecting with his kid in a way that they're not the show's not saying this will fix it we're like everything's fine now but it's sort of like i mean it depends on how good the chips are if the chips are great then maybe chips maybe maybe we're on the road a move in the right direction yes and then the next thing we see as we're doing our fancy drone shot is a bunch of isolated kids on like down their phone you know what i mean um and katie's friend in particular like there's there's no happy ending of that episode for her you know and so i think that like um all that stuff is really finely tuned um something that i like that they made sure to do is that all of the in the andrew tate sort of specific codified insult stuff they only have the adults say yes um and i think it's good characterization for bascom too that this is a guy who's very smart and very good at his job and a good investigator and he's in totally over his head when it comes to anything related to the internet i loved the scene with his son where his son's like this is what these fucking emojis mean you're embarrassing you're embarrassing yourself and me but then also i think that um yeah so to have this like there's a language you don't understand your kid's not safe at night in his room and there's an entire language and not to be like not to be all a father as a father of daughters about it but like my nephew who I love adore is like exactly this age and I was just like thinking about him so much and he's like so sweet and like all this you know like yards away from anything like this as far as I know but like but like yeah it gave me a real I was like oh no not the father of daughters moment for you Joanna uh in terms of of like empathy and fear yeah uh in terms of watching and thinking about him going into high school and what that's going to be like and all of this sort of stuff is just like really terrifying um and they've been kids I don't want to talk about them too much because I don't think my sister would want me to but like they've been kids who have been raised without devices and that was like a strong parenting choice she made and in some regards that is going to change their lives but like i don't think you can keep all this out forever and that's just like something to think about i think episode two does a good job of illustrating some of that too just like the way in which not just teenagers or teenagers but this particular generation of teenagers and the way they respond to things and the way that like even katie's death is something that's kind of being snickered about by some of the kids in the school and that's look that is a tale as old as time like teenagers trying to cope with tragedy and not knowing how to do it and making ridiculous and terrible jokes that's always been a thing but the ways which some of the information, ultimately some of the worldview that we're talking about that Jamie gets a hold of or really gets a hold of him, that's stuff that can course through a school as fast as it can through comments on his Instagram, right? We don't come here to bury the pit in order to praise adolescents. That's not, we love the pit.
Still in the running for best show of the year year for me so far love the pit however you and i were just sort of making fun of this line from the pit that noah wiley's character dr robbie says we are failing young men because we don't teach them how to express their emotions we just tell them to man up and then we let them get their lessons in manhood from toxic podcasts it was just like a little obvious on the nose tell versus show

ultimately and the pit does so many things so well so like again i'm not here to like tear down the pit but i was just sort of like what they thought they were doing with that line is like what this show is doing in a much because it's the whole premise of this show is in a much more complex way again there are there are no clear answers to how did this happen? And there's no clear answer on how do we stop it? The show is not interested in solving this problem. The show is interested in just holding it up for you to look at and think about.
Something I love also in terms of the writing process in that like arduous three week oh my god shooting of each episode process um is that they let the kids rewrite some of the lines yeah because they're like you know we're men in our 50s and like what do we know about the way in which like teenagers now are talking and so um i'm not a young teen so but but like yeah like is this a show that's going to connect with young teens uh you know i'm i'm curious to know i don't know i suspect more so adults and more so adults for sure like i think the effect that you described of if you are a certain age you immediately think to everyone you know who is in that tween to teen bracket and how something how how they may tangentially be involved in these sorts of worlds whether they know it or like it or not yeah that that's something that's i think so much easier to do as an adult looking down in age versus for teens looking across themselves definitely but i i do remember being a kid and i remember there are like tvs and shows you can watch where you're like that's not how in a like a human team of course and then there are shows you can watch where you're like like my so-called life lingers because my so-called life really got it right in terms of the way in which actual teenagers talk versus i mean dawson creek's lingers for a different reason but no human teen has ever said any of those words so like if they got the way that the kids talk right right there's a better chance that a teen could watch this and say it you know not not scoff at like of course older men trying to tackle uh the problem of adolescence in the modern world anything else you want to say about the show i just want to i want to say one i want to clear out one final moment for episode four in particular and i will say like it to me the biggest payoff of the one or style a lot of it is in episode three i think that's an incredible piece of work but what we get from stephen graham and christine tromarco in episode four, as they are processing as parents, and they've been through a day that I imagine is like many of their days where they try to pretend some things are normal and everything just comes crashing down. The idea of normalcy is not available to these people at this time.
And the way it becomes fractured and the way that they start falling apart and the way that they start diagnosing and questioning like was it this thing that i did was it my temper that led him down this particular path uh i think is just a remarkable piece of acting among other things and in particular stephen graham and his character eddie going into jamie's room at the end of the finale holy fuck i mean just sitting on his son's bed tucking in his teddy bear sobbing and apologizing to his son that can't be there it just fucking laid me out man and i think the power of this show is if i ever listen to the song that is playing during that sequence for the rest of my life that's aurora's yeah through the eyes of a child yeah i'm i'm just gonna be wrecked and it's gonna take me right back to that moment it's like for everything that we said about the pit like to me adolescence it also has its moments of like let me say this part out loud really quickly before we move on but then it lands it with this and so that to me is why everything feels so different in the show as far as as far as messaging within television is concerned i feel like we've had a real week uh talking about being TV criers, Rob, but like, yeah, I mean, I think that, um, that Aurora song there, it's just a job incredibly well done, but the show ends with a very sentimental, yes, extremely sentimental song, sentimental in like a very specific sort of like UK of, that sort of like UK extra layer of schmaltz that I think that they are like capable of, I say with absolute adoration. And this extreme performance from Stephen Graham.
But like what I love about that, and it all lands and I am also laid out, but like I'm the kind of person where person where if they hadn't done it right, that would feel all too much.

Oh, yeah.

You know what I mean?

Well, especially when he's crying over the murderer of a teenage girl.

Yes.

And so to me, it's the magic of this show that Jamie in scenes can make you forget for a second that he's a murderer.

And that his parents can make you forget that what you are feeling and what you're crying about and what you're experiencing is sympathy and pity and regret over if not a murderer than the tragedy that made this kid a murderer and that's like a wider societal tragedy as much as anything but i think watching going back and sort of re-watching episode one um and i didn't watch it all back through but i like sort of spot watched some things and like i remembered registering this at the time that stephen graham he's giving a like they break into the home he's like what are you doing you know this is my home you're wrecking the place all stuff like this but he is like often quite contained and stoic in that episode and until the end obviously but i remember watching it i'm like they're giving us this because i know he has to go somewhere you know so they're starting us here so that steven graham who's like every cut to his face i was like captivated by i just think he's incredible in this um but yeah i i i thought it all built up incredible, um, conclusion and climax and Christine Tremarco, whose work I'm not as familiar with, uh, I thought it was wonderful.

Stephen Graham has said that they've those two actors have known each other since they were children. And there is this sort of like baked in.
This is what I'm talking about. Like, like, we've been talking about Christopher Guest films, like creating your stable of actors that you just feel comfortable and familiar with and you can go build from there uh we're incredibly lucky to get to see it anything else you want to say about this tough to watch but very incredible show I really hope if you're listening this far you've already seen this show and And if you somehow haven't, even after everything you've heard,

I would encourage you to watch it.

Yeah.

Thank you to Justin Sales.

Thank you to John Richter.

Thank you to Donnie Beecham.

And we will be back for Severance,

more White Lotus,

and all other kinds of things here on the Prestige feed.

And we'll see you soon.