David Farnor | On 25, Mar 2025

The internet has been set alight by Adolescence, Netflix’s hit four-part drama, which tells the story of how a family’s world is turned upside down when 13-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) is arrested for the murder of a teenage girl who goes to his school.

The talent behind it is formidable. Created and written by Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne (The Swimmers, Joy), the film stars Graham as Jamie’s father, Eddie Miller, alongside Ashley Walters as Detective Inspector Luke Bascombe, and Erin Doherty as Briony Ariston, the clinical psychologist assigned to Jamie’s case.

“Gripping, harrowing and moving, this flawlessly executed one-take masterpiece is one of the most timely pieces of TV in recent memory,” we wrote in our five-star review.

But while the subject matter is powerful in itself, Adolescence has added impact because it’s all filmed entirely in one shot – each episode is a separate, lengthy single take. Directed by Philip Barantini, who previously collaborated with Stephen Graham on the film Boiling Point, the technical wizardry is a jaw-dropping match for the creative storytelling, and begs the question: how on earth did they make it?

Here are the answers:

Where did the idea come from?

“Adolescence is not a whodunit, it’s a why-dunit,” explains Jack Thorne. “How did this boy end up in this place? Your son has been arrested on suspicion of murder. And this started with a phone call from Stephen saying, how do we tell that story in four one-hour shots?”

“I always wanted to tell a tale over a long time span, but not do it the way normal chronological stories work,” adds Graham.

“That was the idea of spanning it across 13 months, but dipping in and out,” comments Philip Barantini.

“And so we quickly worked out we’re going to do the arrest, we’re going to do school, then we’re going to spend some time with Jamie, and then we’re going to spend some time with the family,” explains Thorne.

“You get four different windows into Jamie’s world,” he adds. “But it was working out where the windows were best placed so that we could understand him.”

DoP Matthew Lewis says: “I think if anything can force us to look at a subject that we don’t want to look at, it’s a one-shot, because you really are forced to watch it. There’s no break from it.”

Thorne adds: “It was really important to Stephen that this wasn’t a show that made easy answers. The one thing he said to me right at the beginning was, we can’t blame the parents.”

“We always see the perspective of the victim’s family, which is rightly so, do you know what I mean? Of course we should,” comments Graham. “And with Episode 4, I wanted to have a look at the impact it has upon the family of the boy who has committed the act.”

How did they cast Owen Cooper as Jamie?

There were several hundred actors seen by casting director Shaheen Baig. Owen sent in a self-taped improvised scene and then had several callbacks and workshops. After a chemistry read with Stephen Graham, Owen Cooper was cast.

This is his first ever acting role, and Episode 3 was the first episode to be filmed due to scheduling reasons – which meant that Episode 3 was the first time Owen had ever been on a set.

“It was nerve-wracking reading Episode 3 and then realising, oh, we need to cast a 13-year-old lad who can really, like, go on a journey emotionally,” says Barantini. “That rehearsal week, you’re constantly asking yourself, can he get there? You’ll be giving him notes, and he’s just looking at you… And then they’ll go and do a take. Every single note will be nailed.”

“I always wanted Episode 3 to be a wonderful two-hander,” says Graham. “It’s a Jack Thorne beautiful masterpiece.”

Did the cast rehearse?

The cast and crew had three weeks to make each episode. The first of those weeks were spent walking through the episode scene by scene. In Episode 2, for example, there were 320 kids, as well as 50 adults playing the teachers and parents, plus chaperones, etc, so it had to be meticulously planned out.

In preparation for the shoot, segments of the script were rehearsed and a little bit more added each day – starting with five minutes on the first day and then adding further material as they went through, so by the end of the week they would be doing full run-throughs.

“We’re going to be going through it a lot, over and over again. Then it becomes muscle memory, you know?” says Barantini.

“You kind of feel like you’re in a theatre space more than a TV space,” observes Ashley Walters. “Once the train starts moving, no-one can stop it. Do you know what I mean?”

How many times did they film each episode?

Lewis says: “With adolescence being a single shot format, it all runs very differently to normal. It took a few weeks to really understand that it was only one camera moving through space, that there was no cuts, and that whatever was shot is the episode.”

That means each episode had to be filmed multiple times, with attempts abandoned if there were crucial mistakes made. Each take was also inherently slightly different. In Episode 3, for example, Owen yawns and Erin replies “Am I boring you?”, which wasn’t in the script.

After a week of rehearsals, then there was a tech rehearsal with all the crew in place.

“We put a lens on it,” says Lewis. “We start moving through the space, we start realising what doesn’t work, kind of two steps forward, one step back a little bit.”

For the third and final week of each episode, the team had 10 attempts to shoot the whole thing in one take: one take in the morning, one in the afternoon, across five days. Although, with some takes stopped and restarted, there were more takes than that in practice. In Episode 1, for example, the police knocked down 12 doors in total – with a PVC door specialist replacing and fitting a new door for each take.

“Before each take, my heart is pounding,” says Lewis. “Absolutely everyone feels it because everyone knows how important their job is.”

“It takes a real army of people to put it together, you know, because there’s not one person on that set who’s not important,” adds Barantini. “Because without every single person, it could all collapse.”

“Watching it come to life, watching the decisions that Matt and Phil made as they were telling the story through the camera, it was really thrilling,” comments Thorne.

Episode 1 was the 2nd take, filmed on its 1st day of shooting.

Episode 2 was the 13th take, filmed on its 5th and final day of shooting.

Episode 3 was the 11th take, filmed on its 5th and final day of shooting.

Episode 4 was the 16th take, filmed on its 5th and final day of shooting.

How did the crew stay hidden?

The choreography was planned out in detail, with the cast and crew all part of those movements, along with the positions of the camera. Sometimes, crew would stay in shot but dressed in costume so that they become extras. Other props, such as the van in Episode 4, had multiple versions, one with a camera mount on top and one without so that the van can appear normal when on camera.

How did they pull off Episode 2?

There are two stunning moments in Episode 2.

First, when the camera goes off into a chase and flies through a classroom window at school. However, there wasn’t actually a window there, so the camera could go through the hole in the wall – one camera operator was in the room and one was crouching outside to take the camera and continuing running. The glass was then put back in using VFX.

After the chase, the camera then follows DI Bascombe back to the school and follows a school pupil to the traffic lights. Then, as she waits to cross the road, the camera is attached to a drone so that it can rise up and fly 0.3 miles across the town to the murder scene. It then comes down to a camera operator and a team, who catch the camera and end with a close-up of Stephen Graham. All the while, a choir from the school where they filmed sings in the background, with a vocal solo from the actor who played the victim in the story, Katie Leonard.

“The collaboration on this show, a lot of it was technical, but the surprising thing was using technical to free us,” says Thorne. “I’d written in this chase sequence, and this chase sequence took Bascombe and this boy beside the murder site, and then the camera was gonna travel back on its own back to the school.”

“That moment would have felt almost like a video game walking down the street,” says Lewis. “I think it would just take the audience away from what the piece is.”

“And then Phil called me up and he said, Matt and I think we found a way to make the camera fly,” continues Thorne.

“If the camera could float away by itself, then it couldn’t possibly be attached to a person,” says Lewis. “It kind of feels more ethereal. So you’ve got Bascombe finding his own sort of resolution. And you’re with this character, Jade, whose heart is pulled out. And you’re with all these kids as they pull out their phones. And then the camera takes off. And the camera comes to rest at the murder site.”

“It was an example of the technical meeting the story,” says Thorne, “and finding a fusion which is actually better than anything that the story had come up with on its own.”

 

You can watch a full behind-the-scenes making-of video from Netflix here:

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