Adolescence (2025)
Director: Philip Barantini
Original Concept & Screenplay: Jack Thorne / Stephen Graham
Genre: Psychological Crime Drama
Production: United Kingdom
Episodes: 4
Runtime: 60 minutes each
“Please note: by reading this review, parts of the story may be revealed.”
One Murder, Two Victims (Episode 2)
The way the interrogation is conducted, the questions asked, and the manner in which Jamie and his family are treated reveal the expertise and high skill of Inspector Luke and Sergeant Misha Frank (Faye Marsay) in handling juvenile offenders. In the first episode, the two worked in sync, speaking a common language. But in the second, everything changes. Misha, instead of simply following protocol and advancing the case by the book, openly voices her opinions, challenges Luke’s decisions, disagrees with him, and, unlike Luke, tries to see Adam’s (Amari Bex) problems at school not from a police perspective but from a human and empathetic one. In this episode, she is more present in the frame, speaks more, and becomes active at just the right moments. Misha wants Luke, if only briefly, to put aside his professional role and simply be Adam’s father, to listen to his son. Thus, she becomes a bridge for their dialogue, even amid tension. This effort of Misha’s pays off beautifully: a turning point emerges, hitting two marks with one arrow:
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The true motive behind Jamie’s murder of Katie is revealed.
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Luke and Adam’s fractured relationship begins to mend, as Adam clearly and quickly explains to his father how Katie cruelly mocked Jamie’s identity using emojis. At this moment, Luke realizes that while the evidence had always been in front of him in printed form, he had approached the case with astonishing blindness.
In Adolescence, we witness two father–son relationships: Eddie and Jamie, Luke and Adam. Despite their stark differences, these fathers share two things: both have enrolled their sons in the same school, and both remain oblivious to the deep, serious troubles their children face. Eddie didn’t know his son was suffering violence in the online world, while Luke had misinterpreted Adam’s withdrawal and school refusal as irresponsibility. Now he learns that Adam is facing physical bullying at school, by someone brazen enough to torment him even in class, even in front of his police officer father. The violence in the school and the heightened tension caused by Luke and Misha’s investigation into Jamie’s possible accomplice reveal the inability of the school authorities to maintain order and peace — a red flag for overcrowded public schools.
Thanks to flawless, top-tier cinematography, from the beginning of the second episode we are constantly surrounded by students as we follow Luke and Misha — note the extraordinary planning required to choreograph this many actors, non-actors, and extras in long takes. These teenagers are aimless, disheveled, restless, glued to their phones — the supposed future-builders, trapped in a virtual world! The same sweet, joyful children seen in the opening credits now appear as joyless, weary, and angry adolescents, enslaved to their devices. Their deliberate silence in the face of police is not only fear: these mute witnesses know better than anyone that Katie and Jamie had turned malicious. It’s no exaggeration to say many of them share responsibility for what happened — yet they learn nothing from it.
When Katie’s best friend Jade (Fatima Bojang) attacks Jamie’s best friend Ryan (Kane Davies) in the schoolyard, the other students surround them like spectators at a gladiatorial fight, cheering — the difference being that they instantly record the rage, the madness, and the potential for another murder with their phones. Meanwhile, Matthew Lewis, the main cinematographer, captures their faces, actions, and reactions.
Through months of rehearsals, careful planning, and up to ten takes per episode, Lewis’s camera team and director Philip Barantini have created a marvel. The visual style chosen for each episode — playing with depth of field, ever-shifting framing, flawless rapid refocusing from one character to another, perfectly timed pauses for the cameraman to enter or exit vehicles (episodes one and four), or to mount and unmount the camera onto a drone — is unique in its kind. Perhaps the only comparable work is Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark. After filming it in one unbroken 90-minute take, Sokurov reportedly fainted from psychological strain and had to be taken to hospital.
Returning from this digression back to Adolescence: consider the cinematographic peak during Ryan’s breathtaking escape from the police. When he realizes they’ve caught on, he jumps out of a classroom window, and the camera, chasing him, passes fluidly through the adjacent frame — which we later realize had no glass, with the pane digitally added in post-production. The result is a bold, unforgettable moment in the history of long-take cinema.
At the end of episode two, a week has passed since Jamie and Katie’s absence from school. Now that Jamie’s accomplice has been caught, now that Luke and Adam’s relationship has begun to heal, and now that Jade — played brilliantly by Fatima Bojang — feels Katie’s absence so intensely that she waits a few moments for a miracle before heading home, we are carried gently with the flow of life back to the crime scene. Staring at Eddie’s devastated face, a soft choral voice whispers to us: how fragile we all are.
(This review will continue, exploring other dimensions of this gripping series that has captivated so many viewers.)
