It landed on Netflix on Thursday 13 March, and the world hasn’t stopped talking about it since. Adolescence, the four-part drama co-created by Stephen Graham and Help writer Jack Thorne, is a harrowing look at male rage and teenage knife crime, following 13-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) as he’s arrested for murder and the aftermath that ripples through his school and home. The writing is gripping, the acting is astounding – but the thing that’s had viewers around the world in awe of this show is the fact that each episode is filmed in one single, continuous take. No cuts, no CGI blending shots together – just one camera, following multiple actors around multiple sets, for a whole hour at a time.

The series comes after Graham and director Philip Barantini’s one-take movie Boiling Point, which focused on a highly-strung chef during one particularly stressful night at an upmarket restaurant. Asked to apply their approach to a new show for the small screen, they decided to tell this specific story after Graham had noticed (and been disturbed by) several news stories of young boys murdering young girls across the UK. This hyper-prescient topic would have been tricky to handle under any circumstances, but delivering episodes entirely in one take? The mind boggles. The result is some of the most absorbing television in recent memory: the always-mobile camera and relentless subjectivity immerse you completely in the experiences of the characters, with the technical genius only enhancing the on-screen emotion.

The team would shoot two takes of an episode a day, with each shot around 10 full times.

Each episode has a different setting. The first depicts Jamie’s arrest, with Ashley Walters’ DI Luke Bascombe and Faye Marsay’s DS Misha Frank breaking the Millers’ door down to arrest Jamie, terrifying his father Eddie (Graham), mother Manda (Christine Tremarco) and sister Lisa (Amelie Pease) in the process. Jamie is taken to the police station, held in a cell, strip-searched and interviewed, all whilst pleading innocence to his father, whom he requests to be his appropriate adult. This first instalment is the most chilling of the lot, as Jamie’s culpability remains in question, and the cold, impersonal formality of the arrest process is carried out on a seemingly innocent young boy.

Chapters follow at Jamie’s school, where Bascombe and Franke attempt to understand Jamie’s motive by talking to his friends; at the centre Jamie’s being held at, during a conversation between him and psychologist Briony (Erin Doherty); and a morning in the life of Jamie’s family at home over a year after he was first charged. By all accounts, the process of creating these remarkable episodes was an arduous one all round. As recently confirmed in a thread by Netflix on X, preparation for shooting took the form of countless rehearsals, starting out with a small portion of the script and expanding out each day, until the team were doing full tech run-throughs. These rehearsals are also where the choreography of the eps would be nailed down, with DOP Matthew Lewis planning out exactly where the camera would be, and how the crew would manage to move around it. The team would shoot two takes of an episode a day, with each ep being shot around 10 full times (though sometimes more – the second ep had a total of 13 takes).

Unlike Boiling Point, much of Adolescence is not constrained to only one location. There are car rides; movement around the endless corridors of an entire school, followed by a foot chase that takes the camera several streets away; a trip to a hardware store; and, most memorably, the conclusion of Episode 2 sees the camera attached to a drone, floating upwards into the sky before travelling over the tops of houses to the site of the murder, ending with a haunting close-up of Jamie’s father Eddie (Graham) leaving flowers. The lens seemingly travels through windows, on and off vehicles, up and down stairs. It’s all achieved by the camera being constantly passed between operators and attached to cranes so as to keep that sense of momentum going.

The episode most tied to a single setting is the third, where Doherty’s Briony meets Jamie for the last time, as she conducts an assessment on his understanding of the charges against him. But this perhaps more simple set-up for the one-take format doesn’t make it, or the episode, any less powerful – instead of marvelling at the camera flitting around, the viewer almost forgets it’s there, as it slowly circles Jamie and Briony, capturing their heart-pounding rollercoaster of an interaction. The intense close-ups make the chemistry between Doherty and Cooper the heart of the episode, their fragile connection and friendliness giving way to violence, aggression and total dismay on Briony’s part as she attempts to needle her way into Jamie’s psyche.

It’s a stellar performance from Doherty (who recently worked with Graham on historical boxing drama A Thousand Blows), who maintains Briony’s poise and professionalism until Jamie leaves the room, and she crumbles into nauseated despair. Even more impressive is Cooper – a first-time actor chosen by Graham, Barantini and casting director Shaheen Baig as part of a specific commitment to find new talent. Cooper’s portrayal of Jamie as both a scared child you can’t help but feel protective of and, at times, a frightening young man prone to a flaring temper and spouting baffling ideology would be considered pretty dang good in any other normal TV show. That he managed it in the high-pressure one-take environment of Adolescence, memorising that many lines, and delivering them so expertly and emotionally, is downright extraordinary. This surely marks the start of an acting career for Cooper – his next project is already in the bag, playing young Heathcliffe in Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights.

Filmmaking wizardry and incredible performances aside, part of what’s making Adolescence resonate so much with viewers is its subject matter. Throughout its four episodes, the script peels back the layers of misogyny, cyber-bullying, generational trauma, social pressure and toxic masculinity that contributed to Jamie’s crime without ever attempting to provide any kind of resolution or defined explanation for them – that’s too big a problem for even a show this good to tackle. Thorne’s research into how these issues affect teenagers is clear in the subtlety of how the young characters engage with each other about them, the secret code in the emojis they use, and the complete lack of awareness from their teachers and parents. Being an adolescent – and raising one – is harder and more complicated than ever, and this show understands that, deeply. Adolescence will surely help to start conversations that can try and bridge that gap. Even more so than its one-take brilliance, that will be its legacy.