Adolescence - Netflix

Do you recall the feeling as a child when you got in trouble in school, and you knew that when you got home, your parents were going to “kill” you, figuratively, of course?  Your stomach was in knots for the entire day until that school bell rang at 3:30pm, signaling you to your final destination.  Playing out the terrifying scenarios in your mind as you try desperately to figure out how to escape your predicament.  The anxiety-induced anticipation was often worse than the punishment. And if you were a latched-key kid like me, you sat on that long bus ride home where you did not utter a word to anybody and still had to wait a couple of hours when you got home for your parents to arrive sometime thereafter. When watching Netflix's 4-part series, Adolescence, a sense of anxiety follows you like a shadow down a dimly lit hall for every meticulously painful moment.

Adolescence is a suspense thriller about 13-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper), who is accused of brutally killing his female classmate and all the trauma that it causes and the effects on everyone involved. It starts with the detective who arrests him, who has to confront his own relationship with his son, who is being bullied at the same school as Jamie, to the therapist who evaluates him trying to stay fair-minded. Still, her armor of impartiality is shredded by the time her evaluation ends.  It ends with Jamie’s family, his father, Eddie (Stephen Graham), and mother, Manda (Christine Tremarco), with his sister, Lisa (Amelie Pease), who tries to take back the day but soon realize they have to accept the day as it is and move on.

By far, Owen Cooper’s performance as Jamie Miller has been the best performance by anyone this year.  To cast him in this role was brilliant.  He takes you through a spectrum of emotions, from feeling sorry for or empathetic to becoming put off or angry with him with his condescending attitude; from one moment, you want to hold him and hug him because he is a 13-year-old boy facing a lifetime of punishment to guarding yourself and wanting to get out of the scene as he turns on a dime from an innocent child to a psychotic adult, soothing the heart and then breaking it seconds later.

Not to be overshadowed, but another performance worthy of mentioning is Stephen Graham's performance as Jamie’s father.  Viewers may remember him as Baby Face Nelson in 2009’s Public Enemies or Al Capone in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.  Graham portrays a father who desperately wants to believe in his son and protect him from the monstrosities of life.  He soon realizes that his son is not a child anymore; he is becoming an adult, and he makes life decisions that Graham can no longer protect him from.  From the beginning of disbelief until the final realization, his gut-wrenching performance leaves you sobbing in the end.

It is not the fear of punishment that grabs your attention while watching Adolescence. But it is the uneasiness that something terrible has happened or is going to happen, and it is just a matter of time before it comes to fruition. As a consequence, somewhere in the back of your mind, the question arises, can it just be over so I can get out of this overwhelming claustrophobic abundance of emotions?