Well, hello and welcome back to the Speak Life Podcast. Today we are talking about the Netflix series Adolescence. Nate Morganlock of Speak Life very kindly invited me onto his YouTube channel, Reform Mythologist, and the two of us had a conversation about this Netflix show, which everyone is talking about. If you don't know, Adolescence is a mini-series, four episodes, created by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham, and the story follows a 13-year-old boy called Jamie Miller as he is arrested on suspicion of murdering a classmate. The series explores all sorts of issues relating to this current cultural moment in Britain, social media, concerns, parental concerns about what kids are seeing online, what they're being exposed to, the school system, the police force, and remarkably, each episode was filmed in a single take. The camera doesn't cut at all over the course of each episode. So it's following these characters around in the wake of this devastating situation. In this conversation, Nate and I discuss the show, our thoughts about it, and we also get into some of its theology. I should say that there are big spoilers, so if you'd like to watch it knowing very little, which is probably a good way to watch it actually, going in, I recommend uh pausing this episode and maybe coming back to it after you've seen adolescence. So there's the spoiler warning. Without further ado, we will get straight into the conversation.
SPEAKER_02In a show that has no reference to God and has no reference to the church, has no people of faith, they are shown to be incapable of solving the problems that they've got. There's an emptiness, there's a bleakness to the whole show.
SPEAKER_00We're not trying to give answers, we're not trying to lay blame particularly. It's a really complicated time, but we need to be talking about these things.
SPEAKER_02Utterly intense, captivating TV. So, Thomas, have you seen Adolescence, the program that everyone is talking about?
SPEAKER_01I have watched all four episodes yesterday on the recommendation of multiple people, including yourself. And let's just say the the hype is deserved, I think.
SPEAKER_02100%. This is probably the most outstanding piece of television I've seen for a very long time. So, how quickly into it did you know that it was one shot, or were you already aware before it started?
SPEAKER_01I have been told going into it that it was a one-shot thing, and I'm a bit of a sucker for that kind of thing. I I love uh Alfred Hitchcock's rope, which was made to look like it was done in one take. I think it was 15-minute chunks that they kind of spliced together because that's how long the film cameras could could contain in those days. And then obviously 1917, the San Mendez film made to look like it was done in one take. So it's kind of a feat of filmmaking. There's a danger it can feel like it's a gimmick, yeah. Um, but I think this used it really well because it's four episodes and each episode takes place at a different time in a different location. It didn't feel like a gimmick, it it really felt like it served the story, would you say?
SPEAKER_02I didn't know that it was all going to be one shot per episode. Right. And after about I think when the when the camera moves, like in that very first episode, when they get in the car and they say, Right, we're ready to go and do the raid, and the car starts moving. At that point, I was like, Oh, this is all in one take, we haven't cut yet. And then I actually found it really distracting because all I could think about was okay, so how did they do that move? And you know, thinking about how the the shot is being set up. So initially I thought, Oh, this is actually really annoying because I can't stay in the show because I'm worrying about all the logistics of how you move the camera. And then the second thing I wrote down was this feels like a stage play rather than a TV show. You kind of feel like you're in a theatre space more than a TV space. Once a train starts moving, no one can stop it. Do you know what I mean? Because you know the actors are having to just go with it, and there's a kind of energy that comes from you've got to get it right this time. But there was something there initially that I thought, oh, this is actually distracting for me. But then as I got into it, went okay, they're gonna do it all in one take. Then I actually relaxed into it and really appreciated not just the feat of logistics to make that happen, and I've watched loads of the BTS stuff about how did they do it, but because I think it allows the actors to stay in character and to be intensive in those roles, which brings out these phenomenal performances.
SPEAKER_01I mean, across the board the casts were just incredible, weren't they? I found uh the policeman, I've forgotten his name. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Bascomb Asher D, who was actually used to be in, I think was in So Solid Crew.
SPEAKER_01Hmm.
SPEAKER_02You don't remember So Solid Crew.
SPEAKER_01And the whole the whole family, I mean, the dad, Stephen Graham. I believed he was a dad. Yeah. I I think you believe all the relationships, don't you? And the show has a lot to say in terms of maybe current parental concerns about what kids are seeing on their computers, and you know, the feat of filmmaking that it is, all of that is worth talking about. But I think fundamentally it works because you you believe these relationships, don't you?
SPEAKER_02They're completely invested. And yeah, so the mum who is played by Christine Tremarko. I was blown away by her in the fourth episode. The intensity of those performances and the believability of the relational ties between them, they actually seemed like a married couple, and it seemed as though this was their son. And then I think probably episode three with the psychologist played by the remarkable Erin Docherty, playing Brian E. Ariston, that's the one where you just go, This kid is insanely good at this because this is an hour-long dialogue, basically, and he's completely compelling, and you believe everything he's going through, and there's so many layers within that script for what he's trying to do in the conversation, how he's changing his approach to her, the back and forth that goes on between the two of them, just phenomenal.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and this is where the doing it in one take really puts more pressure on the performances, doesn't it? As you say, because the camera can only be in one place at a time. That's what I found really interesting. Is it gonna follow him into the cell in the police station? Well, it kind of does, but then it goes on to another character.
SPEAKER_02But obviously, this is a show that is completely about well, it's about adolescence, it's about growing up as a young teen in a modern Britain that feels like it doesn't have answers to life's deepest questions. So the writer I see says, This is not a who-done it, this is a why done it. Adolescence is not a who-dun it, it's a why done it.
SPEAKER_00How did this boy end up in this place?
SPEAKER_02So the whole question is why has this boy done this terrible thing? And of course, by the end of the first episode, you know he has done it.
SPEAKER_01In a way, that first episode has the most stuff going on. It kind of gets that out of the way, and then it's about the much more intimate vignettes of family and the psychologist and stuff. I'm kind of glad the show did that, and so the mystery in your mind throughout it is not whether or not he did it, but but why, as you say.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, there's a lot of exposition that's happening in that first episode, which obviously a police drama is ideal to do that because people have got to share this information. But then when the father realizes he's done it and sees the video for himself, and he's gonna live with the fact that his son just a few moments earlier told him he didn't do it, and you just that wrestling as a as a parent, you know, with this kind of whole question, which then hangs over the rest of of the show.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the final episode with the mum saying, actually, maybe it's okay, maybe we need to acknowledge that we did have something to do with this. Because they want to say, and of and of course they're right to a degree that they didn't know he was gonna do this, yeah, they did not raise him to do this in their minds. It is his fault, this crime. And yeah, I thought it was really powerful when the sister says, But Jamie's ours, he he is in our family. We made him, yeah, he came from us as the line for us. Yeah, yeah, and I found that really powerful because it was this kind of acknowledgement that Ash we are interconnected as families, yeah, and so we can't say we have nothing to do with this, and so they kind of bear the the burden as a family at the end.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, and in terms of the you know, you've got these four episodes, first one's about the police, second one's about the schooling, third one about the psychologist and this kind of medical kind of aspect to it, and then the fourth one is obviously just about the family, and I I thought it was it was interesting to explore the story in these quite you know kind of snapshot ways through the framing of these different institutions. It showed the the just merely the horizontal of the kind of secular worldview through these various institutions to try and handle the problem of adolescence and the problem of human you know sin and uh inclination towards evil. None of the institutions seem capable of coping with that, um and not even you know the family the most right. So is that the institution for the final episode? That's what I think and then the intensity of the it being his his birthday that was a really sharp bit of writing because that is a family institution. A birthday is not you know something that that it is organised by anyone other than the family, Jamie's mum. She's bought the black pudding and she wants to make this little breakfast and they've got this little plan and and they're trying to just use the things of the family to try to do it, but again, it's not enough to cope, and so by the end of the episode and the end of the series, life is very, very bleak.
SPEAKER_01One of the most powerful moments in that I found was him just trying to wipe the word off the car that are being graffiti off the side of the van that are being graffited and it's just not coming off, and you just see his face kind of fall.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, you're right, and that again provides within the storytelling, it's not just conversation, it's an action that becomes yeah, it drives the story on because how do you get rid of this stain? And all you can do is you know, cover it up, you know. You can't actually deal with it. I hadn't thought of that.
SPEAKER_01That's interesting. Seems like you're getting very deep now. So your thing uh what's your thing about the man eating the apple at the start?
SPEAKER_02So one of the things I forget where who said it, probably everyone says it, but looking at the opening scenes, opening scenes tell you a lot. So if you try to wrestle with a piece of media, then think what is right there at the outset. And there's is there anything there that is thematic or emblematic or symbolic for anything else? Now, opens with a Rukan figure, very pleased, and shown from behind, yeah, the figure from the back, and the audio is him crunching an apple. So he listens to the voice note from his son saying, Oh, I'm a Tommy's hurting, and then he gets into the car, and then Frank says, Why are you eating these apples? and he's like, Oh, it's to replace the cigarettes, and there's a weird conversation about a bushel and how much that is, and they just and one level you kind of go, This is the kind of slice of life, mundane conversation that happens between you know, police officers before they're about to do something like this a big deal. But I wonder whether that idea that he's eating an apple to replace the cigarettes, and yet it's not agreeing with him. He's got he's like, There's a problem with my stomach acid or something that the apple isn't enough to deal with what he's got going on. Now it might be better than smoking, right? But somehow that is an attempt to try to solve a problem which itself brings a set of problems, and I think the theme of the show is how do you solve the problem of adolescents in a broken world with broken people, with sinful people? Not with apples, not with not with apples, right? Yeah, but also these institutions which are meant to solve the problem aren't doing a good enough job, so the school isn't capable of coping with the these teenagers, and the police aren't capable of understanding the social media uh emoji stuff, and the family, tragically, the family isn't capable because when we look at them in the fourth episode, they just feel they haven't understood. We thought we were doing the right thing, but this isn't a sufficient uh answer to the question of what to do with fallen man. And then of course the episode three, which is the psychologist, even though she's brilliant, right? You're really backing her because you want her to do well, she builds a relationship and she's trying all the stuff, she's left in tears. So every single stage, people are left lost and and and kind of bereft that they can't handle this. And I think that's because it's a purely horizontal story, it's a godless world with impotent institutions, I think.
SPEAKER_01And maybe that's what's refreshing about it, is it doesn't kind of try to preach here's the solution to this problem, it kind of throws up its hands and says, Yeah, we don't know how to solve this. Tell me if I'm reaching with this. Okay. Well, when I saw the apple at the start, I was like, hmm, Garden of Eden. Was it John Milton's Paradise Lost to popularise the idea of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil being an apple? We we don't know that it was an apple. I I thought that as I saw it, I was like, no, sorry, that's too far. But then it turns out that Bascombe's son is called Adam. And I was like, okay. Interesting. And that Adam is mentioned, uh, the the word the name Adam is brought up again when Jamie is being searched by the officers, and his dad says to them, I don't know you from Adam, mate. Why are you doing this? And so it was almost just enough subtle references there. I'm not saying it maps on to other, but Jack Thorne, who who co-wrote it, he did he did write his Dark Materials, the TV series, which is a very theological, very godless show, very anti-god story by Philip Pullman. But it wrestles with those theological ideas. So I just wonder if he put in a sense of okay, Adam, the problem of humanity, and the idea of sins being passed from father to son. Yeah. So it does toy with this idea of has Jamie inherited the temper from his dad, who inherited it from his dad? What do we do with this temper? What do we do with the fact that we seem to we can't help but pass on our problems to the next generation? I d that might be reaching out.
SPEAKER_02I think this is where it's helpful for us to distinguish between what is the writer intentionally doing, right? If you sat him down and said, Right, did you put this, you know, this Apple scene in the beginning because you were trying to allude to Genesis 3? Is the police officer's son called Adam because you know you're trying to make again another Genesis illusion? I'm not sure that from my perspective, he even needs to know what he's doing in that sense. In part because I'm convinced that when we tell stories, we always end up making illusions that we don't necessarily intend, and that the whole hermeneutical project or that how we interpret story and storytelling is governed by theology, governed by by scriptural principles. So I almost don't need you know the writer to be able to say, Yeah, I intentionally wrote this illusion in here, because I actually think what is the show trying to do? It's a very flat story, it doesn't try to reach for theological answers in any of the scripting. Yes, there's references to Jesus Christ, but it's always as a swear word, and so I don't know that he is trying to do anything other than just tell a flat human societal story, and yet because he's writing a story about human beings who live in society, it therefore has some connection and resonance with a biblical worldview because well it exists in a biblical world. I don't think you're you're stretching there. I think I wouldn't want to build a major thesis on it, but just to say, in a show that has no reference to God and has no reference to the church, has no people of faith, has no people who are acting out of a kind of you know flat mechanistic you know empiricist kind of worldview, they are shown to be incapable of solving the problems that they've got. There's an emptiness, there's a bleakness to the whole show. Yeah, but how I mean, so good, so brilliantly told and utterly intense, captivating TV.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's interesting to think that the sort of place for watching those sorts of stories as Christians, because James Harleman, who does popcorn theology in his book Cinemagogue, he has a really helpful kind of distinction he's noticed or kind of picked up on in a lot of films and TV shows where they either seem to be life under the sun stories or life transcendent stories, life under the sun kind of naming the reality of a broken world, but not offering any kind of transcendent hope. Whereas, you know, the films that have the real darkness and then light sense of victory at the end, they're more kind of trying to grasp a life transcendent story. And I think there's a place for both types of story because we have the book of Ecclesiastes, and something about I just found watching this, it kind of just helps you sit in, yeah, there is there is something wrong with the world, isn't there? And the story, yeah, adolescence as a show doesn't offer any hope for that, but by kind of naming that, I think it can help us reflex and it makes the the good news of the gospel shine brighter, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and so in a way I don't want to you know say, oh, if you're gonna make the fifth episode, this is what you should do in the season, please no, end it there. And I actually I also don't want more TV shows like this. I don't want you know everything to now be a four episode mini mini show mini show that's never cuts between camera angles. I think this was just a really brilliant way of telling a very complicated story and being honest and not not preaching. Like I don't really like I'm sure there are loads of people who say, oh, this is just all you know terribly woke, or I know, or this is all terribly kind of um complaining about Andrew Tate. I genuinely think this is a really honest look. I don't think there's a massive kind of push that is anyone's trying to ideologically do this. I think the creators are genuinely wrestling with some issues around what modern life in Britain is like and they've actually found that they don't really have any answers. And that's what's potentially so useful because, as you say, you know, life under the sun, meaningless, meaningless, where into that world we speak, you know, the gospel of hope and the the message of truth. Yeah. Amen. Well, please do remember the media consumption is optional, you are under no obligation to watch any four episode one take shows on Netflix. I've been joined by Thomas Thorgood. I'm reform mythologist named Morgan Locke. We're glad you're here.