Adolescence

[heartsinvisiblefury]

What an amazing piece of television. Stephen Graham is exceptional. Highly recommend this - on Netflix.

I’m watching it now. I’m just not buying Jamie as a character. The actors great but I don’t believe in him.
also some of the process stuff is annoying, the school, the psychiatrist, the police chasing the kid and roughing him up to get a confession.

Just finished. Really liked it but not so keen on the last episode. I suppose there needed to be a debriefing in a way but it just didn’t feel as good as the other earlier ones.

i don’t mind the camera work, I’m pretty sure it’s used in Boiling Point which has Stephen Graham in it. Added to sense of tension in that one.

I thought it was very well executed. Showing us the CCTV footage early, with incontrovertible evidence that Jamie did kill Katie was very clever as we all spent the next couple of episodes trying to work out who had actually done it because surely Jamie was innocent; how could that little boy who wet himself when the officers turned up in his bedroom have done something like that?

Then you start to see how angry and unnerving he is in the scene with the psychologist and you start to realise he isn’t an innocent little boy, and he really did do it.

I also found the gradual unravelling of Eddie’s state of mind throughout the show very well portrayed by SG. Not sure if Eddie actually starts to realise he might be in some way responsible for Jamie’s behaviour in the way he speaks to the women in the show, or if he remains unaware, possibly he does because he asks his wife how they managed to bring up their daughter so well. The last scene with the teddy seems to have divided opinion, but I thought it was pretty poignant because he has to accept that his little boy is actually a murderer and he’ll never tuck him into bed again.

my teens are similar age. We live in a big city. The realities of knife crime & social media bullying / sharing inappropriate photos are very real. If you don’t have dc with phones it'll appear less scary

I’ve just finished it tonight and found the last episode really hard to watch, I deeply disliked the father, so the ending for me I wasn’t feeling any sympathy at all, I couldn’t relate to him in the slightest in fact he scared the crap out of me.

i think from the start I didn’t like the parents, the lack of questions made me think they knew what he’d done. It felt like they had been waiting for something like this to happen.

loved the physiologist lady though that was the best episode.

Completely agree re: ep 3, my DH didn’t understand at all why I was talking more about the security guard - I’d expected the behaviour seen of Jamie (given it was a drama), but found the scenes of Briony being bothered by the guard & having to tolerate it to get her work done felt so real. I kept saying that I bet he wouldn’t have treated the male psychologist like that & DH really couldn’t see it 🤦🏻‍♀️

I just finished it and reading this thread, it is fascinating to see how different people pick up on different things in the same show. People working in schools commenting on Ep2, people with bad relationships in the past picking up on Eddie's scariness. I thought Ep3 was fantastic. The subtle shifts in power and perceived power was fascinating. Very well done overall. Also, not giving my 2 DSs access to social media, ever!

I thought it was fantastic, and I agree @BoobyBird29, it’s interesting to see how people perceive it in different ways.

It opened up some interesting conversations with my teenage son, I’d love to see it being shown in schools!

'found the scenes of Briony being bothered by the guard & having to tolerate it to get her work done felt so real. I kept saying that I bet he wouldn’t have treated the male psychologist like that'

He wasn't being creepy or inappropriate, he was just chatting and maybe being a bit nosey. Many people are like this so yes I bet he chatted just as annoyingly to the male psychologist.

I actually thought the mother and the daughter were superb and provided lots of food for thought on how it would feel to be a family member of a perpetrator of crime, to be guilty by association. 17 months had passed and the start of the episode, and glimmers throughout, show the facade of still trying to maintain a ‘normal’ family life. But between them striving for normality we see the parents breaking down, reflecting on their own feelings of guilt, their own shortcomings.

Regarding the dad, I think if it was my 50th and I was being taunted by youths, my property vandalised, knowing people were blaming me, unexpectedly being offered camaraderie from incel supporters when you are doing something as innocuous as buying paint, then I would quite likely lose my rag too (& I am a woman) Episode 4 showed the pressure and sadness they were all under day after day after day. Broken but trying to live. As is often said in these kind of cases, there are no winners.

The security man was just about the most unpleasant adult in the whole story. So hideously creepy. Invading her personal space, staring, mansplaining - while at the same time pretending to be obsequious … The way he thrust himself as close as possible behind her made me shudder. He was utterly vile. (And I dread to think how someone like that would have behaved with any female residents in such a facility.)

I saw the security guard as inappropriate and creepy also, not just nosy. It’s the sort of shit women have to put up with daily. An older woman would have pulled him up on it, or maybe he wouldn’t have acted that way to an older woman

Indeed. None of his behaviour was accidental - the script and direction and acting were all specifically geared to showing us this alternative unwelcome male behaviour.

There he was - lording it over a facility for violent offenders. Each of them had probably been convicted of one specific offence - but his own behaviour towards women would be happening every day. Making us uncomfortable, upsetting us and thereby distracting us from our work, leaving us furious …

While he carries on, believing he’s morally superior to the incarcerated residents and genetically superior to any mere female.

But clearly the whole thing went over some viewers’ heads!

'But clearly the whole thing went over some viewers’ heads!'

We all interpret things differently and that is fine, that is why we are on a chat forum.

I saw a minimum wage security guard being a jobsworth. I didn't find him creepy.

I found the psychologist absolutely incompetent and unprofessional but if you disagree I wouldn't suggest anything had 'go over your head'. Different views, it's fine.

Gosh there are so many points to it. Really interesting how this programme is marmite.
The chat about school days is trying to show how the family is trying to cope with what’s happening to them. Trying to deepen understanding of the relationship between mum and dad and how the daughter reacts to them. It’s to bring a light tone - lulling you into a sense of security and tiny semblance of happiness before the mum and daughters world turns back to shit again when the dad has a bad experience in the shop and it all turns dark and frightening. It made me so sad when the mum and daughter were still happily chatting / buying a plant thinking things were going to be ok and they might have a nice day, when we as the audience knew that the dad was about to explode any moment.
Watching the family was like sitting on a knife edge. I felt like I was walking on eggshells myself!
My own dad is a kind man and treated me with love but even then, this scene stirred up something in me- a memory or feeling of treading on eggshells around parents who were in a rage.
Is this how my own kids feel? Do I get in rages and they feel the same?
The car journey home. Silence. Been there lots of times in various relationships. Could cut the tension with a knife.
The mum, trying to hold in her weeping when she knew her boy was guilty and would never be getting out.
The awkward conversation between parents about their own guilt.
The daughter hiding in the room, her whole life changed with a volatile father, wondering when it’s ok to go in to break the ice with her parents. Been there.
Then the sense of loss from the dad. Screaming into his son’s pillow. His son is gone. Who he thought he was is gone. Felt like yesterday he was a little boy (isn’t this the same for all parents?) and now he’s lost to them and has committed this awful crime.
And they have to carry on whilst the world will batter them down again and again for being his parents. Can’t even leave their 17 year old daughter at home alone for fear of what might happen.
Just a few points. Doesn’t even scratch the surface to be honest. And that’s only episode 4.
One of the best, most astonishing, cleverly shot and excellently acted pieces of TV I have watched in a very long time. Finally something that’s not the same old crap.

@Gloriia I was thinking more of non-posting husbands and male partners who wouldn’t have noticed what some people here did notice.

Quite. I think lots of people have watched this expecting it to be a Harlan coben drama with action and car chases or similar which is certainly isn’t. The storyline isn’t the main driver here, and their isn’t action in the normal way.
I think if you like to watch something fast paced, that you don’t have to dig too deep into, with less narrative then this isn’t for you.

And this is fascinating. I felt the same way. It’s so engrained that many women won’t even notice and most men won’t. This is part of what the whole message underlaying this show was about.

Nope. That last paragraph shows you didn’t get it at all. Is all you got from that episode ‘stops and squabbles?’ Really? You can’t find anything deeper to say about the whole episode other than that?

I thought this was one of the best things I have ever watched on television...and I have watched a lot of television over the years! The acting was superb. The one camera take is mind blowing - I am in awe of the talent involved to achieve this.

I am going to watch it again with my husband (as I watched it on my own over the weekend). I bet I will see more layers to.it. There was a choral piece sung by young people at the end of episode two (when the drone went up) which I would like to hear again.

I am amazed that some people found it boring or whatever - I suppose the world would be very dull if we all thought the same!

Nothing deep to say no. He is understandably a broken man, trying to hold it together and we see prolonged scenes in the van trying to pretend everything is normal. It isn't though as we all know. It was a wasted episode, though a good one for Graham to showcase he irritation then his despair skills.

I thought all the episodes provided an interesting dimension of observation & social commentary.

To me what was interesting in the last episode was the interactions between the family. The cracks in the relationships beneath the surface.How stoical the daughter was knowing they couldn’t move and escape it, knowing that it was how they would be regarded forevermore. Their conversation with Jamie on the phone, them still treating him as their son, their torment later as they reminisced about him being young.

Lots of grieving families of victims are portrayed on TV and quite rightly our sympathies lie with the victims and their families. It is rare to see the impact on the perpetrators families. It reminded me of when I read ‘We need to talk about Kevin’, another powerful exploration of the conflicted emotions the parent of a murderer experiences. A horrific place to find yourself.

'There was a choral piece sung by young people at the end of episode two (when the drone went up) which I would like to hear again.'

It was a cover of a Sting song called 'Fragile'. Lovely and very haunting version

The drone shot was stunning

But that’s the point. We all don’t know do we? Unless a child of ours has murdered someone? It’s giving us a take of what that might look like and what it looks like for this family. It’s a slow, in depth take. Not just few lines or a couple of weepy scenes.
I have no idea how I would act in this situation with another of my children in the car trying to celebrate my husbands 50th? Whilst someone sprayed nonce on the work van. Have you?

Yes I could imagine it would be very challenging and you'd maybe just ditch birthday wishes for that year.. We would all be broken, upset, despairing. His reaction was exactly as you'd expect. It was a wasted episode, an homage to Graham's various facial expressions.

Someone upthread said the domestic violence and coercion in the last ep was absolutely awful of which there was neither so it is ok to all see these things differently. It is telly, not real life.