“Nightmarish” and “immersive” can feel like overused words when describing the experience of watching a TV drama. But they are adjectives that do not fully encapsulate what it feels like to follow the Miller family in Netflix’s four-parter Adolescence. From the opening minutes, when the door to their unassuming detached home is broken open by armed police, who storm in and arrest 13-year-old Jamie on suspicion of murder, to the devastating ending, this is jaw-dropping TV.
Written by Jack Thorne and the actor Stephen Graham (who plays the father, Eddie), each episode is shot by the director Philip Barantini in a single take (he deployed a similar technique in the kitchen-set film — and subsequent TV series — Boiling Point, also starring Graham). It is an approach that means he can fill the screen with what feels like every conceivable register of emotional experience without let-up.
