Spoilers Ahead:
The show Adolescence has become one of the most talked about shows of 2025, combining crime, drama, and emotion in a cinematic but personal feeling show.
The show follows a thirteen-year-old boy, Jamie Miller, played by Owen Cooper, whose performance in Adolescence earned him the title of the youngest actor to ever win an Emmy. At only fifteen years old, Cooper made history and brought fame to his name with a performance that critics called “Raw”, “Unflinching”, and “Once in a generation”.
The one-take style of filming helps pull viewers into the chaos, showing the real time for how long everything actually takes to happen. This allows for some quiet or tense scenes where even if there’s nothing going on, the pause still serves a purpose. You see the tactics of keeping the camera on someone for a long time, even if they aren’t technically doing anything; the period of time spent on someone allows viewers to sort of see the thought processes of people through their actions, their body language, and even their breathing.
The series consists of four episodes, each of which provides a different part of the tragic story. In the first episode, Jamie’s life explodes when the police break down his door and storm his house. The police ransacked his family’s house after arresting him for the murder of a classmate. In this episode, Cooper’s portrayal of confusion, terror, and sadness is so authentic that it makes it hard to believe this was his first time acting.
In the second episode, the police dig into Jamie Miller’s School, questioning several students, including Jamie’s friends and one friend of the victim, Katie Leonard. All of Miller’s friends denied any connection to the situation and claimed that they didn’t know why he did it. Katie’s friend, Jade, had an extremely emotional reaction to her friend’s death, leading her to punch and beat one of Jamie’s friends, Ryan, because she believed that he also had something to do with Katie’s death.
In the third episode, the show takes a turn, Jamie is placed under psychological evaluation, and begins seeing a therapist named Brioney Ariston, played by Erin Doherty. Throughout these meetings with his therapist, the truth begins to come out, not about whether or not he is guilty, but the truth about who he is and how his trauma has shaped and changed him. This episode is set at a slower pace than the previous ones, allowing the audience to see the weight of the guilt on Jamie Miller’s face.
The fourth and final episode of the series brings the story full circle; every unanswered question from previous episodes is answered. The conclusion is something that nobody expected, with the ending being ambiguous, leaving the audience with countless questions, wondering if justice truly even matters once lives are already destroyed.
The episodes end with a clip of Jamie’s Father, Eddie, breaking down in Jamie’s room while holding one of his teddy bears after Jamie announced that he was going to plead guilty to the murder of Katie.