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Speaker 1: You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast

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Speaker 1: from News Talks at Me.

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Speaker 2: The time was three point thirty four am on a

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Speaker 2: Wednesday morning, and I lay there, wide awake. I pressed

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Speaker 2: the screen on my phone, you know, like you do,

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Speaker 2: just to kind of check the time. Any messages, I wondered.

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Speaker 2: I flipped my pillow, I shifted my weight, and I

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Speaker 2: tried to sleep. The obvious cause of my insomnia was

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Speaker 2: the five week old grunting and squirming in his sleepsack

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Speaker 2: a few feet away from me. But it wasn't the

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Speaker 2: humidity or the police helicopter making one of its swoops

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Speaker 2: over the neighborhood. And this insomnia wasn't caused by a baby.

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Speaker 2: It was caused by adolescents. My wife and I had

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Speaker 2: watched the final episode, Episode four, a few hours earlier.

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Speaker 2: The episode finished, like most of them, in devastating fashion,

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Speaker 2: and I just lay there, just turning over the store

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Speaker 2: in my mind. If you haven't yet caught The Adolescence Buzz,

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Speaker 2: the show I think has had more hype in the

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Speaker 2: couple of weeks since it came to Netflix than almost

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Speaker 2: any other show in recent times. It's broken all sorts

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Speaker 2: of records. After just eleven days, it broke the record

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Speaker 2: for the highest number of Netflix streams in a two

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Speaker 2: week period, tens of millions of views worldwide, with millions

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Speaker 2: more every day. And in a sense, it's a pretty

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Speaker 2: simple concept, right. Adolescence is a four episode series set

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Speaker 2: in the UK about a knife crime. A young woman

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Speaker 2: has been stabbed to death. Every episode has an incredibly

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Speaker 2: ambitious production quality in that it's done in all one shot,

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Speaker 2: so the whole thing forty five minutes or an hour

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Speaker 2: long in the case for a couple of episodes, one take,

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Speaker 2: and in the words of the creator, Stephen Graham, it's

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Speaker 2: less of a who done it? Than a why done it?

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Speaker 2: As someone who's worked in TV for nigh on twenty

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Speaker 2: years now, I feel like I've got a pretty good

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Speaker 2: sense of just how hard it is to make a

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Speaker 2: one shot show. Technically speaking, it is just ridiculously complicated.

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Speaker 2: I just don't think most people appreciate how hard it

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Speaker 2: is to light a single scene, let alone scene after

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Speaker 2: scene after scene, going from indoors to outdoors, to classrooms

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Speaker 2: to hallways to drone shots one hundred meters off the ground.

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Speaker 2: In some cases. Sound recording is such a pain, and

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Speaker 2: what if an actor screws up a line twenty minutes

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Speaker 2: in Will You Start Again? That's what I read a

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Speaker 2: piece which explained that many of the crew and adolescents

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Speaker 2: who were working on the production team had to dress

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Speaker 2: as extras during the show's production so that if they

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Speaker 2: were caught in the back of shot, it would hopefully

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Speaker 2: make sense. It's funny. When I told a friend about

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Speaker 2: the show, I said, oh, yeah, it's all done in

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Speaker 2: one shot. He said, well, what's the point. Sounds like

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Speaker 2: a bit of a gimmick. Personally speaking, though, I just

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Speaker 2: found that filming it in one shot never gave me

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Speaker 2: the chance to subconsciously look away or to catch my breath.

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Speaker 2: There was no chance to check my phone. The story

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Speaker 2: didn't pause because the people didn't pause. The scene didn't

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Speaker 2: end until the episode ended. And what scenes. Ah, the

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Speaker 2: speed of episode one. I just love how it had

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Speaker 2: all of the kind of banal but nonetheless fascinating procedural stuff,

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Speaker 2: the process, the chaos of episode two at the school

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Speaker 2: it was. It was like a stunning vision of a

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Speaker 2: totally dysfunctional space, a totally dysfunctional school, the teachers yelling

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Speaker 2: to try and control the kids, the teachers who didn't care.

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Speaker 2: Episode three, My god, what a brave call, what a

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Speaker 2: bold call. Just two people in what was basically an

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Speaker 2: empty room. There was no thing of kind of visual interest,

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Speaker 2: just two actors in conversation, the volatility, the brinksmanship, the unraveling.

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Speaker 2: And then episode four, all that was lost, the desperation,

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Speaker 2: the performances, and adolescents, especially Steven Graham. I just thought,

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Speaker 2: we're astonishing. I immediately became that person annoyingly texting all

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Speaker 2: of his friends and family and group chats and asking

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Speaker 2: who'd seen it. And it's funny because you know, we

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Speaker 2: think of movies as being art, you know, film cinema.

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Speaker 2: It's kind of high art, right, and well it can be.

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Speaker 2: I just think we probably don't think of TV as

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Speaker 2: being art in quite the same way, or at least

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Speaker 2: as often as we do with films. But how do

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Speaker 2: you define good art? Surely it's a creative work that

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Speaker 2: makes people feel, that affects them, that sticks with them,

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Speaker 2: that has them tossing and turning in bed at three

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Speaker 2: point thirty two am on a Wednesday morning, replaying scenes

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Speaker 2: in their head. It has been a long long time

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Speaker 2: since a TV show affected me like adolescents. As a story,

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Speaker 2: it was devastating. As a TV drama, it was close

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Speaker 2: to perfect.

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Speaker 1: For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame. Listen live

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Speaker 1: to news Talks a'd B from nine am Saturday, or

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Speaker 1: follow the podcast on iHeartRadio