Director: Philip Barantini
Concept & Screenplay: Jack Thorne / Stephen Graham
Country: United Kingdom
Episodes: 4
⚠️ Please note: this article contains potential spoilers for the series.
One Murder, Two Victims
The sensation of blood racing through your veins, breath faltering, muscles tingling—and above all, a lingering mental unrest—is the intense aftermath of the masterful suspense in a series that, in just over four hours, shouts a harsh truth in our faces:
“A profound, undeniable, and damaging transformation of our times.”
The warning embedded in the series Adolescence must be heard, discussed, understood, and—inevitably—adapted to. It speaks of a fast, powerful evolution that has unfolded over the last two decades, once fragile and slow, now grown into a thick, tangled tree deeply rooted in the fabric of our lives.
We must accept that our very way of life has changed. The virtual world is now just as important as the real one—perhaps more so. Denial not only solves nothing, but could lead to catastrophe. The broader this virtual realm becomes, the more destructive its consequences. The only way to protect ourselves and our loved ones is to learn the rules of surviving in this new world—a world that can simultaneously grant us identity, or crush our confidence completely.
Today, children and teenagers don’t just need a safe home, ready meals, clean clothes, and the words “I love you” or “goodnight.”
Parental protection is no longer just about being physically present, spending time in their room, or watching over their bodies. Now, more than ever, we need to guard their thoughts and inner lives—lives that endlessly roam the dangerous landscapes of social media.
In this world, people no longer speak or express; they write, react, and instead of listening, they read texts and comments. Most things in this newly constructed world happen in silence—and this apparent quiet, these mute frustrations, may be the very roots of horrifying actions.
Every one of those expressive, yet silently trapped, gazes (especially that of Owen Cooper) is the result of dismissing the significance of wandering through the fake kingdom of cyberspace.
It’s the same haunting, enigmatic look of the boy in Adolescence, staring out from the series’ main poster—at us, and at his father. A look that we see again and again in insert shots, one that easily unsettles the viewer during the narrative and lingers long after the show ends.
One of Adolescence’s major strengths is its persistence in the viewer’s mind, a result of how believable it is.
It feels real—its tone, atmosphere, structure, and the way the story is told, full of tension, tightly maintained rhythm, and suspense. The actors—especially the teenage ones—deliver meticulously crafted performances, striking a perfect balance that breathes life into the story.
The impact is so strong that viewers may need to keep reminding themselves: what they just saw, what they felt, what they momentarily believed to be the tragic story of an ordinary middle-class family, was just a well-made show.
A show whose creators, with meticulous cruelty, aligned every formal and structural element—from the gripping long-take cinematography to the deliberate blend of close-ups, wide shots, and aerial views—to ensure full sensory engagement.
Their goal? To lure the audience into the illusion of omniscience, prompting them into constant cognitive bias: making judgments, only to be proven wrong over and over again.
Each of these hits—each shattered assumption—cements the final piece of Adolescence’s lasting psychological construct.
And what greater reward for a creator than a work that lives on in the mind of its audience?
(This review will continue, exploring further aspects of this gripping and widely discussed series.)
