Got around to watching ADOLESCENCE past few days.
Very, very good show. The third episode was my favourite, amazing two-hander by both the young actor playing the kid, and the actor playing the assessor. The kid was terrific showing you the light and shade of trauma and maladjustment, and Erin Doherty was equally terrific illustrating the extraordinary toll on professionals in that situation.
I liked the whole thing, there were a few moments here and there where the cracks showed and it got slightly stage-y, I think Stephen Graham was more often the cause, but it was very good.
With the single take filming, firstly it's technically mind-blowing and I wouldn't change it one bit for this production because it was a big part of the idea, but secondly you can see how its limitations mean it won't work for a lot of narratives. Forcing the action to unfold in time is one thing, but the inability to cut between shots in dialogue scenes leads to a heck of a lot of creaky panning around interiors.
Plus the shots and the montage have to be "just there" wherever the camera moves. I think the very first sequence, where the police bust down the door, sets up one of the nicer compositions in the whole thing.
If I had one nitpick (of course) it's that I expected it to have a slightly more hard-hitting and detailed take on how the manosphere has been "radicalising" young men via short form video platforms, it kept things very vague when I thought they'd show some of those frankly creepy videos in situ.
