Adolescence, Netflix review - Stephen Graham battles the phantom menace of the internet

A dictionary definition of adolescence is “the transitional phase of growth and development between childhood and adulthood”, but in this four-part drama it looks more like a nightmare zone of uncontrolled rage, anxiety and sexual confusion.

Created and co-written by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham (also one of its stars), Adolescence is the story of how 13-year-old Jamie Miller is arrested for the murder of Katie, a fellow-pupil at Bruntwood Academy in an unspecified Yorkshire town.

Obviously this hurls his parents, Eddie (Graham) and Manda (Christine Tremarco), into a state of blind panic and disbelief. Could he really have done it? Why would he do it? How could their son be capable of it?

The early-morning raid on the family home, when a convoy of police vehicles envelops the Miller household and paramilitary-looking cops batter the front door down, looks like an assault on a heavily-armed terrorist cell rather than the arrest of a confused schoolboy in his pyjamas, and the way the police roughly shove aside Jamie’s mother and sister perhaps tells us something about how the public image of the police has changed.Adolescence’s most distinctive trademark is the way its four episodes have been shot in long, unbroken takes, lending it an improvisational air like a documentary being made on the hoof. Director Philip Barantini and his crew had to shoot numerous takes until they got the results they wanted, but it’s a remarkable technical feat.

The first episode takes in Jamie’s arrest and its attendant formalities, as DI Luke Bascombe (Ashley Walters, pictured above) takes him through the admission procedures, advises him of his rights, makes sure a lawyer is assigned to his case and so on. He chooses his father as his “appropriate adult”. Jamie assures him of his innocence, but the police have CCTV footage which suggests otherwise.

The second episode is set in Jamie’s school, where the police quiz staff and other pupils and try to make some sense of events, but the staff (including the head, the well meaning but hopelessly flustered Mrs Fenumore (Jo Hartley, pictured below with Walters and Faye Marsay) seem to be hanging on by their fingernails as chaos swirls around them. “These kids are fuckin’ impossible,” says history teacher Mr Malik. “What am I supposed to do?” The other pupils all seem to know the details of the death and Jamie’s arrest, though no information has been officially released by police. A girl called Jade, who was best friends with the murdered girl, viciously attacks and beats a boy called Ryan, yelling “you killed my friend, you fucking murderer.”Bascombe’s son Adam is also a pupil here, and it’s he who gives his father some tips about how Instagram messages and their colour-coded emojis may help to explain the catastrophe that has taken place. Katie, it seems, may have been baiting Jamie with the accusation that he’s an “incel” and is doomed to be a virgin forever, and the spectre of malign internet influencer and celebrity misogynist Andrew Tate is raised by police sergeant Misha Frank (Faye Marsay).

It’s Bascombe himself who comments that the school “just looks like a fuckin’ holding pen”. The underlying thrust of the narrative is the way that social media and the infinite unregulated badlands of the internet have seduced the Generation Z cohort into a cruel and amoral vacuum, where old-fashioned values of commitment or even love have been superceded bv alienation and sexual violence.

It’s a mountain-sized issue to tackle in a four-part drama, and it doesn’t always work. The third episode consists of Jamie sitting through an analysis session with psychologist Briony Ariston (Erin Doherty). Owen Cooper (who was 14 during filming) delivers a quite brilliant performance as Jamie, moving through the gears from introverted passiveness to furious outbursts of rage (“you do not get to control what I do in my fucking life!”), but a shrink solemnly quizzing a 13-year-old boy about “what being a man feels like for you” or “does your dad have women friends?” feels wildly inappropriate. Maybe Ms Ariston got her surname because she goes on and on and on (pictured below, Doherty and Cooper).The finale, too, feels like it’s stretching too far as it finds the Miller family trying to come to terms with the long shadow which has fallen over them. Eddie and Manda reminisce rheumily about the good old days when dating meant going to clubs and dancing to A-ha’s “Take On Me”, then flagellate themselves for allowing Jamie to lock himself away in his bedroom and prowl the internet into the early hours. “You can’t watch ‘em all the time, all the kids do it,” says Eddie dejectedly.

But these are questions nobody can answer, and the Millers could only do their best as they saw it. Many parents must know the feeling, and Adolescence will sound a troubling and uncomfortable alarm.

• More TV reviews on theartsdesk