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In the late 80s, there was a trilogy of dramas by Malcolm McKay called A Wanted Man. It starred Denis Quilley and Bill Paterson and at the centre had the most phenomenal performance by Michael Fitzgerald as Billy, a man arrested for gross indecency who comes to be suspected of the murder of a child. The first instalment followed his interrogation by a detective (Quilley), the second his trial and the third its aftermath. It was, and remains, the most devastating and immaculately scripted and played series I have ever seen – as close to televisual perfection as you can get.
There have been a few contenders for the crown over the years, but none has come as close as Jack Thorne’s and Stephen Graham’s astonishing four-part series Adolescence, whose technical accomplishments – each episode is done in a single take – are matched by an array of award-worthy performances and a script that manages to be intensely naturalistic and hugely evocative at the same time. Adolescence is a deeply moving, deeply harrowing experience.
It begins with the police bursting into 14-year-old Jamie Miller’s family home and arresting him on suspicion of murdering his classmate Katie the night before. The first two episodes immerse us in the world of the police station, procedural detail and the detectives’ building of the case against Jamie (Owen Cooper), although he denies involvement.
He chooses his dad, Eddie (Stephen Graham), as his appropriate adult. We will watch this man’s disbelief turn over the course of the 13-month period of the story into unfathomable grief. It is no spoiler to say that Jamie killed Katie – the evidence is given to us early and incontrovertibly. The drama’s concern is with why. We are led into a teenage world that is lived primarily online and which adults are, whatever they might think, incapable of properly monitoring or understanding.
DI Luke Bascombe (Ashley Walters, supremely good, especially at capturing the essential bleakness of a job that may or may not bring justice, but will never restore a dead child to her parents) only really begins to understand the possible “why” when his own teenage son translates the emojis used in Katie’s comments under some of Jamie’s Instagram posts. The world of “incel” culture, the message spread between boys and young men about what they are entitled to expect and to take from girls and women, comes alive. Andrew Tate’s name is mentioned by adults as they try to get to grips with what they are learning, but the children don’t bother – it is just the water they swim in.
The most astounding episode – of a dazzling quartet – is the penultimate, which consists almost entirely of a session between Jamie and a child psychologist, Briony (Erin Doherty), who has been sent to make the independent assessment required before the court case. Doherty’s signature cool and quick intelligence is perfectly deployed here as Briony nudges and corrals the boy by turns, pushing him closer and closer to truths he doesn’t want to acknowledge and the articulation of beliefs he barely knows he holds. She pins him at times like a butterfly to a card.
And it’s here we should pause, as he goes toe-to‑toe with a woman who is surely emerging as one of the best actors of her generation, to note that this is 15-year‑old Cooper’s first role, won by sending a tape to the casting director, Shaheen Baig, who looked at 500 boys for the part. It’s an astonishing performance that lets us see the radicalised misogynist Jamie is or could yet become. But to do that with no previous experience is a testament to innate talent and the creative fostering that must have attended the entire shoot.
If the final episode, which concentrates on the family’s desperate attempts to hold themselves together, feels slightly weaker, it is only in the context of what has gone before. Its refusal to offer easy get‑outs (no abusive parents, no dark family secrets), no clear explanation as to what leads one boy to murder and others not, feels brave and real. Adolescence asks who and what we are teaching boys and how we expect them to navigate this increasingly toxic and impossible world when our concept of masculinity still seems to depend on boys and men doing so alone. And it keeps the victim present enough that the question of how many girls and women will die while we try to work it all out stays with us, too.
