This Netflix miniseries is by far the best 4-hour binge on the service

Netflix has been producing original content for over a decade at this point, and has made lots of easily digestible miniseries you can finish over a weekend. But the streamer’s crowning achievement came last year: the four-episode drama series Adolescence very well may be the best thing Netflix has ever made, and it’s hard to see them topping it anytime soon. If you still haven’t seen Adolescence, it’ll be four hours of your life well spent.

Adolescence is a great crime show for the 21st century

The drama is thrilling and up-to-the-minute

Adolescence is set in a small town in the north of England. At the start of the series, police raid the home of the Miller family and arrest 13-year-old Jamie (Owen Cooper). Jamie is suspected of killing a classmate named Katie (Emilia Holliday), but claims he didn’t do it. His father Eddie (Stephen Graham) believes him…until he sees CCTV footage of his son actually committing the crime.

The show is not about whether Jamie killed Katie; he did. The show is about why. Over the next four episodes, we get to know some of Jamie’s schoolmates and learn about the online spat that escalated into murder. We learn that Jamie spent a lot of his time on his computer at home, diving into dark corners of the internet where he became radicalized by misogynistic influencers. Finally, we see the Millers try to return to some kind of normal, knowing it’s not really possible.

When you hear that the show is about a kid who commits a brutal murder, you might think that he’s a pint-sized psychopath, Damien the demon child. But Adolescence isn’t interested in sensationalizing this subject matter. Jamie is capable of great violence, but he also has outer space wallpaper in his room, and he wets himself when the police raid his house, because he’s a scared kid. It might be easy to blame his parents, and it’s true that they aren’t as aware of Jamie’s activities as they should be. But they mean well, and it’s hard for them to keep tabs on their son when he spends so much of his time in a digital world about which they know little to nothing.

This exploration of the divide between older and younger generations when it comes to the internet is just one of the ways that Adolescence feels relevant and modern in a way that few other shows do. But Adolescence never feels preachy or like it’s trying to impart a message about the evils of technology or something; it deals frankly with problems a lot of families face and refuses to pin the blame on any one person or institution. It’s the kind of show that you’ll be thinking about for days or weeks after you watch it, both because of the topics it tackles and because of how it’s made.

Adolescence is a technical marvel

How in the world did they do that?

Adolescence has four episodes that run for about an hour each, and every one of them is filmed in one long, continuous take. There are no trick shots where the camera goes behind a pillar or something and discreetly switches to another shot; there are zero cuts, meaning the actors had to get everything right the whole way through, or they would have to start all over. The pressure seems to have brought out the best in the actors, with even younger cast members like Owen Cooper never missing a step.

Learning how the cast and crew made this show is almost as interesting as the show itself. As you can see in the behind-the-scenes documentary above, it took a ton of careful coordination, with camera operators, drone pilots, and performers all working in close coordination with each other. And the fact that everything is done in one take makes the show itself feel more immersive. Adolescence doesn’t quite move like other shows, which makes you want to watch it more closely, because we’re usually only a few minutes away from some new amazing maneuver you can’t believe they managed to pull off.

These technical feats would be plenty impressive on their own, but when paired with the show’s relevant and carefully written story, it feels like we’re witnessing something singular: a show that has a lot to say and is finding wholly new ways to say it.

Adolescence is the anti-Netflix Netflix show

It’s challenging but also very watchable

We’ve heard a lot over the years about how Netflix, for good or ill, consciously tries to dumb down its content so it can be easily absorbed by people who are watching while scrolling on their phones; Matt Damon, star of the new Netflix movie The Rip, is one of the latest people to call attention to Netflix’s requirements. But obviously, those requirements aren’t applied across the board, because a show like Adolescence makes no apologies for demanding your full attention, and it’s much better for it.

Adolescence also happens to be the number two most-watched English-language show on the platform, so hopefully Netflix will get the message that shows can be both challenging and different but also extremely popular.

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Adolescence season 2?

The creators of Adolescence, Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham, have talked about making a second season of the show, although it sounds like it’s a ways off. Odds are that a new season will tell a different story rather than continue the one about the Millers, but it’s too early to say anything for sure.

In the meantime, there are other great Netflix series to check out, including possibly the best martial arts action series ever made and a detective show so good it ruined all other detective shows for me. But for sheer audacity and insight, it may never get better than Adolescence.