Caution: Possible spoilers ahead.
Adolescence is the show of the moment as well as a tract for the ages. Since it was released on March 13, the Netflix limited series about teenage internet culture, misogyny and the generation gap has been heaped with encomiums. “People liking the show is one thing, but people being deeply affected by it, changing their mindset about their children or their brothers or sisters…” director Philip Barantini told Scroll.
Written by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham, Adolescence comprises four one-take episodes, each of which examines the fallout of 13-year-old Jamie’s arrest for murdering his classmate Katie. Jamie (Owen Cooper) says he is innocent; the police believe otherwise.
Jamie’s parents Eddie (Stephen Graham) and Manda (Christine Tremarco) grapple with the possibility of Jamie’s guilt, social ostracism and anguish over their parenting methods. Clues about Jamie’s actions lie in his school, where investigators find signs of incel behaviour. The manosphere that has influenced Jamie looms over a chilling conversation with his counsellor Briony (Erin Doherty).
Adolescence has been especially well received in the UK, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer supporting a campaign to screen the series in schools. In addition to the boldness and honesty with which Adolescence tackles its subject matter, the show has also been acclaimed for its storytelling style.
The encounter between Jamie and Briony – easily the most brilliantly written, directed and performed episode – was also the first of the four chapters to be filmed by Barantini and cinematographer Matthew Lewis. Barantini had previously made the one-take movie Boiling Point (2021), which starred Stephen Graham as an unravelling chef. Boiling Point too was shot by Lewis.
In previous interviews, Barantini has spoken about the planning that went into Adolescence, the casting of Owen Cooper – who has never acted before – as Jamie, and the show’s commentary on the toxic underside of social media for teenagers. In a conversation with Scroll, Barantini spoke about life after Adolescence – and why the show doesn’t follow Katie’s story. Here are edited excerpts.
What have the last few weeks been like in terms of what you hoped Adolescence would achieve and what it has actually achieved?
We made this show in a small town in the UK. We hoped that we could maybe start a small conversation. We thought that the show will do well and be successful in the UK, but we had absolutely no idea what it has actually achieved.
It’s absolutely mind-blowing. The biggest win for me is that we’ve started this conversation. We may have changed people’s thinking in terms of what their children are up to in their bedrooms, what are their influences on social media.
When I was growing up, I didn’t have phones or social media, no internet. I would be in my bedroom playing board games or a keyboard or whatever. And we were safe. But now, one of the most dangerous places for these kids is their bedrooms, and that’s horrific.
In the UK, there is talk that the show will potentially be shown in schools, and that’s just incredible to me.
The show arguably touches the tip of the manosphere iceberg.
When we were researching this show, Jack Thorne, one of the writers, did a real deep dive into the whole incel culture, what the manosphere is about, the emojis. He went down some really dark holes.
The manosphere is much bigger than what the show has touched upon. Hopefully, we’ve opened a few people’s eyes in terms of what is happening.
The manosphere is directly explored in the conversation between Jamie and Briony in the third episode. This was also the first episode to be filmed. Did the result vindicate the single-take approach – or would that have happened anyway?
We were determined to make it happen. I work incredibly closely with Matthew Lewis, the cinematographer. We had done this before in the movie Boiling Point, so we knew it was possible, but we wanted to push the boundaries as far as we could.
Boiling Point was set in one location. In Adolescence, you start on the outside in a car and then go into a house and then you travel in a vehicle. We wanted to be slightly more ambitious, but without it feeling like a gimmick or a spectacle. Ultimately, the performance and the story always had to come first.
The camera is almost a spectator, it’s the audience’s eyes. We wanted it to feel organic.
We didn't have a backup plan. We had jumped into this boat all together and we were sailing. There was no going back. We wanted to get to dry land, so we had to keep going. Thankfully, it worked.
Was the overall production as intense as the show itself?
It was incredibly intense, and incredibly stressful at times. However, I had to create a lighter atmosphere on set because the subject matter is incredibly dark. We were putting not just the adult actors but also the child actors through a lot of stress and some not very nice things.
So when we cut after the take, we created an atmosphere that was welcoming and light and fun. We made sure everybody was happy.
A child psychologist was with us every single day. We also had a company that was available to all the cast and crew for free, in case they wanted to talk to somebody in confidence if they were having any problems.
Were there any surprises during the shoot?
The pleasant surprise was the fact that the actors were enabled to be free. If they messed up their lines, I said to them, don’t worry about it, just keep going, because the audience doesn’t know what’s coming next.
There were a couple of moments in episode one where the camera hit the side of a door and it shook so much that we had to cut and start again. In another part of episode one, all the lights went out at the police station, so we couldn’t continue. If a prop wasn’t in the right place, we had to start again.
There were just little things like this, tiny details that would have a knock-on effect on the whole episode. It was meticulously planned, but anything can happen that’s out of your control.
The show doesn’t go into Katie’s story through her family or friends. Why is that?
We’ve seen that a lot in conventional dramas. The idea usually is to see the victim and also the perpetrator. We wanted to see what the ripple effect was from the perpetrator’s family.
We wanted a normal family. The dad works hard, he’s got his own business. The mum works in a clothes store. We didn’t want to blame the parents. We wanted to show that this was happening, this wasn’t the way the child had been brought up.
In terms of the victim’s side, I always wanted Katie to be a presence in the whole show. We show Katie’s picture twice throughout, once in the first episode and once in the second. We know what has happened to Katie. We know what her family is going through, and it’s horrific.
During the pre-production, I spoke to my composers and I said, I really want Katie’s voice to be in the score. We recorded some vocals with Emilia Holliday, who plays Katie. She is almost like a ghost figure throughout the series. Her voice is at the very end of episode two in the choir [based on Sting’s song Fragile]. The voice in the opening title sequence is also Katie’s voice.
Also, with a one-take format, you’re very limited in terms of what you can show and do. So it was a conscious decision to do it that way.
Also read:
Why everybody is obsessed with the Netflix show ‘Adolescence’
