Adolescence (2025) Review: Four Takes, No Escape

Is Adolescence worth watching?

Yes. Adolescence is one of the finest limited series of the decade, a crime drama in which the single-take filmmaking is not a stunt but the whole argument. Across four episodes, each shot in one continuous movement, it refuses the viewer every exit television usually offers, and its young lead, Owen Cooper, gives a performance of startling control. It is gruelling to watch, which is the only reservation, and it is an intentional one.

What is Adolescence about?

Early one morning, police break down the door of an ordinary family home in England and arrest 13-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) on suspicion of murdering a girl from his school. His father, Eddie (Stephen Graham), follows him to the station, where he must sit beside his son through an interview neither of them is equipped for. From there the series moves outward: to the detectives, led by Ashley Walters’ DI Bascombe, trying to understand what happened; to a clinical psychologist (Erin Doherty) assessing Jamie; and back to the family trying to live with the aftermath.

Adolescence was created by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham and directed by Philip Barantini. It is a British production in English. This review covers the complete miniseries: four episodes of around an hour each, and the story is finished.

The camera that cannot look away

The one-take approach has a long, often showy history, and many films that use it want to be admired for the feat. Barantini uses it to remove comfort. Television consoles its audience through editing: a cut to a reaction, a jump past the dull minutes, a reverse angle in which to breathe. Here there is none of that. The arrest plays out in real time, down to the fingerprinting, the solicitor’s arrival and the long, humiliating waits, and that procedural flatness is more frightening than any dramatic score.

When the camera does detach itself from one character to follow another, it becomes the series’ only editorial comment, a sudden widening of view that shows how many other lives this single event has touched. The technical achievement is immense, but it never feels like the subject.

Owen Cooper and a hard third hour

Owen Cooper was a newcomer, and what he does in the third episode, a two-hander with Erin Doherty set almost entirely in one room, is among the most unnerving acting in recent television. He plays a boy who is by turns childish, charming, sullen and suddenly menacing, shifting registers as the conversation presses on him. Doherty matches him with a professional calm that is visibly costing her something. Both were recognised with Emmys, and it is hard to argue.

Stephen Graham gives the series its broken heart. Eddie is a decent, hard-working father who believes he did right by his son, and Graham lets that certainty collapse in slow motion. Ashley Walters’ detective, a father himself, provides a quieter counterpoint.

What the series is really about

Adolescence is less interested in the mechanics of a crime story than in how a boy arrives in that interview room. The script by Thorne and Graham touches on online misogyny, the vocabulary of the manosphere and the gap between what parents see and what their children absorb on their phones. It avoids speeches and easy villains, and it refuses to let any adult off the hook entirely. The limitation, if there is one, is that the second episode’s school setting can feel more schematic than the rest, a place where the themes are spelled out more directly than elsewhere.

Who should watch Adolescence?

It is for adults, and for parents in particular, though older teenagers watching alongside a parent may find it a useful starting point for difficult conversations. The violence is mostly discussed rather than shown, but the subject is a child accused of killing another child, and the emotional pressure is relentless. Four hours on Netflix is a short commitment in time and a large one in feeling; many viewers will need breaks between episodes.

If you want more British drama of this seriousness:

• Happy Valley, for a crime series equally attentive to the damage violence does to families and communities.
• Broadchurch, which also follows the ripples from a child’s death through a small community.
• Baby Reindeer, another recent Netflix drama that is uncomfortable by design and all the stronger for it.

The verdict

Adolescence is that rare experiment in which form and meaning are inseparable. Remove the single takes and it would still be a powerful drama; keep them and it becomes an argument about complicity that gives its audience nowhere to hide. Painful, precise and superbly acted, it sets a new standard for the limited series.

Rating: 5/5