Reel Rundown: ‘Adolescence’ takes a hard look at middle school, incel violence and family dynamics

For some (maybe many) of us, middle school felt like torture. Meeting new teachers, navigating a new building, trying to decipher a more demanding schedule and enduring the seemingly ubiquitous presence of bullies – all of it, but particularly that latter threat, made daily student life a challenge.

The situation is even more daunting these days when social media adds further complications. It’s one thing to face someone who wants to humiliate you physically. It’s quite another to find yourself the target of trolls who hide behind anonymity.

That’s one of the messages put forth by the Netflix limited miniseries “Adolescence.” Created and co-written by actor Stephen Graham and producer Jack Thorne, the four-episode series is set in an unnamed town in northern England.

It is there that, early one morning, we watch as a platoon of armed police – a SWAT team leading the way – breaks into a house set on an average suburban English street. Their target? Thirteen-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper).

The charge? Murder.

From there, with Jamie being hustled past his shocked and terrified parents – father Eddie (Graham) and mother Manda (Christine Tremarco) – “Adolescence” takes us through a series of events. Among other things, what we watch over the four hourlong episodes are the initial interrogation, the ongoing police investigation, meetings with lawyers, Jamie’s stormy session with a psychologist (Erin Doherty) and ongoing, often painful, family discussions.

Subplots include, one, the troubled relationship one of the police officers (Ashley Walters) has with his own son (Amari Bacchus), who also attends Jamie’s school, and, two, the lasting effects the whole process has on Jamie’s family and his classmates.

Lurking over everything is the single enduring question: How could such a thing happen?

Which is where the title that Graham and Thorne chose feels a bit limiting. Yes, Jamie’s story is the centerpiece of everything that occurs. But this is a family story as well as a police procedural. As such, it’s more complex than a mere tale of middle-school angst leading to a savage crime.

Someone has been murdered, definitely, and the issues of misogyny and arguments concerning the much-publicized “incel” movement are raised. (“Incel,” a blending of the words “involuntary” and “celibate,” refers to those men who feel unattractive to women and therefore are hostile to them.)

Yet while a few such crimes have made headlines over the past decade, the actual percentage of the boys and men consumed by male rage who resort to violence is actually low. And those who do so tend to have even more pressing psychological problems.

The power of “Adolescence” overall comes from how it is produced. Beginning with the opening sequence involving the arrest to the quiet coming together of Jamie’s parents and his sister (Amelie Paese), each episode is told in real time. All reportedly were filmed in a single take, with each one shot as many as 10 times.

The decision by Graham et al. to produce the series in this manner makes us, the viewers, more participants in what’s going on than mere onlookers. The power of this technique, blended with the subject matter and some supremely skilled acting (especially by the veteran Graham and the first-time-actor Cooper), makes “Adolescence” one of the most riveting limited miniseries of the season.

It’s not an easy watch. Then again, though, surviving middle school for some of us wasn’t particularly easy in and of itself.