The one-take wonder of ‘Adolescence,’ a family drama about knife crime

LONDON (news agencies) — Each episode of “Adolescence,” the four-part Netflix drama premiering Thursday, was filmed in a single continuous shot.

While shooting the British show, which traces the emotional fallout after a teenage stabbing, the camera was handed between operators like a relay race, clipped on and off drones and passed between the fast-moving crew as they followed the actors in and out of buildings and vehicles.

It’s a style used before by director Philip Barantini to add an immediacy for the viewer and immersion for the cast, which includes Stephen Graham, Erin Doherty and Ashley Walters.

Graham, who worked with Barantini on the restaurant series and film “Boiling Point,” says it’s a zen-like style of acting.

“You have that kind of spontaneity and that energy that you get from doing a play and doing a live performance,” while using the naturalistic style of television acting, Graham explains.

Newcomer Owen Cooper plays Jamie Miller, the young boy accused of the knife crime. He’s at the center of the story, which expands to show the impact on the police and professionals involved in the case, as well as his family, friends and the children at school. As joint show creator and writer with Jack Thorne, it was Graham’s idea to switch the narrative from being focused on the victim’s family to those in the life of the accused, to ask questions about who is to blame for teen violence.

Now age 15, Cooper put a lot of work into turning up word-perfect to rehearsals, unsure how the one-take style would work (he ended up impressing everyone with his preparation and natural instincts — he’s the next Robert DeNiro, suggests Graham). Planning, though, is at the heart of this type of filming, according to Barantini.

After getting the script from Thorne, Barantini and his team go through the one-hour episodes and trim what won’t work. Then, it’s time for locations. Set in the north of England, a police station was built to purpose; even the number of stairs was calculated to provide the right travel time for a character and their amount of dialogue.

“The technical mastery on this show is so amazing,” says Thorne, who admits he was sad to cut one school scene where a football flies at the characters — the walking took too long.

The family’s home location was found within a three-minute drive of the police station set. An old warehouse, another short distance away, was transformed into a DIY superstore that the characters visit.

“We would digitally map everything out and the camera moves, and then it’s just about getting on set with the actors and being present and dancing,” says Barantini. “It’s a choreographed dance and some things you have to tweak, but you’ve got to be open to that.”

Rehearsals are extensive so they don’t waste time filming until they have movements down for the crew and the cast alike. Walters, who plays the soul-searching police officer investigating Jamie, says he was able to use his movement around the locations to remember the timing of his lines.

Doherty, best known as a young Princess Anne in “The Crown,” wishes she could work on single-take projects for the rest of her life, calling it a “glorious” experience.

“It was this kind of weird, symbiotic relationship that you developed with the camera team. Like they were just moving around you and it just didn’t faze you at all by that point,” she says.

Doherty’s scenes as Jamie’s clinical psychologist are practically a two-hander with Cooper and she reckons he’s one of the best actors she’s worked with: “You’d just be watching him, like, how are you … how are you doing this?”

Occasional mistakes were ironed out during the practice phase.

Christine Tremarco, who took on the emotional role of Jamie’s mom, walked into the kitchen during rehearsal, only to be told by Graham she was supposed to be upstairs with the camera. She didn’t do it again.

“None of us actually screwed up,” says Graham. One time they did restart when a cameraman got stuck outside the building — opening doors for the crew was a key part of the cast choreography.

He relates the experience to a soccer team, where “everyone knows their job and everyone’s in their position. And we just play.”

“It just breeds good work,” says Doherty. “When you know that you can stop, there’s always that safety net, whereas when you take it away, really exciting things happen.”