Is Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’ actually made up of one-shot takes or did they fake it?

Netflix’s new crime drama Adolescence is the best thing the streamer has released since Baby Reindeer. The four-episode limited series is sitting pretty at a perfect 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has instantly become a red-hot awards season contender due to its dazzling performances and technical brilliance.

The show focuses on 13-year-old British teenager Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper), who is arrested for murder at the beginning of the first episode. Throughout the show we see the brutal impact of the situation on his family (led by his father, star Stephen Graham), a painstaking recreation of the legal process, and a subtle but damning exploration of how the manosphere warps young minds.

Adolescence is technically dazzling

Adolescence is a thematically dense and dramatically meaty experience, but that’s uplifted by the fact that each episode appears to be a single unbroken shot. For example, episode one begins with two detectives talking in their car, follows them as they drive to Jamie’s house, continues the shot as armed cops break down his door and drag him from his bed, right the way through to him being placed in a holding cell back at the police station and beyond.

In other episodes, the camera does things that appear impossible, like transitioning between close-up interior dialogue scenes to overhead drone shots and back to close-up drama without cutting away. One-shot scenes (or “oners”) are increasingly popular in TV and movies, and are generally achieved through hidden cuts that allow editors to transition between separately shot sequences while preserving the appearance of a single unbroken shot.

It would make a ridiculous amount of sense for Adolescence to fake the one-shot style. The show relies on pitch-perfect emotional performances (including one from a young teenager in his debut role), scenes with hundreds of extras, the occasional fast-paced action moment, and multiple changes of location.

So, is it fake?

Incredibly, it seems that each episode of Adolescence really is one unbroken hour-long take. Director Philip Barantini decided the show would benefit from being one-shot episodes, which he understatedly said in an interview with The Independent was “quite difficult,” before pointing out that it had to be “meticulously planned.” No kidding.

Preparation involved weeks of technical and cast rehearsals, with Barantini explaining:

“[Tech rehearsals] would be an opportunity for the sound team to put the booms where they needed to be. And, we had all the support and the runners and ADs all dressed in police uniforms in the first episode and teachers in the second episode so they could be on camera and cueing things. It was technically challenging, but a huge collaboration.”

This means one forgotten line or technical error would force them to start the entire shoot from scratch, putting a crazy amount of pressure on the cast and crew. Miraculously, Barantini says there were no “major mistakes” during production, though they did have to start again a few times:

“One time the camera was knocked on the door, so the lens shook a little bit and we wouldn’t be able to fix that. And the other time the lights just went off in the studio in the police station. So it was like, we can’t shoot this now, we have to stop.”

The cast also appear to have handled the pressure smoothly, as Barantini explains:

“The actors are in it. There’s no room for error and everyone has the ball and you’re passing the ball to each other and it’s trust. All the actors are trusting each other and if they mess up a line, someone else will come in.”

It’s illuminating that Adolescence has landed on Netflix at the same time as the Russo Brothers’ The Electric State. The latter has a reported budget of $320 million, but has landed with a wet squelch to complaints of “lousy” performances and dull visuals.

The budget for Adolescence hasn’t been released, though could well have cost less than 1% of what Netflix forked out for The Electric State while being inarguably superior to it on every metric. Just a little something for the bean counters over at the streaming giant to consider.