Entertainment News

Home

Movies

Streaming

Music

Comic Books

Quizzes

Newsletter

Netflix

How ‘Adolescence’ Pulled Off Its Incredible One-Shot Style

Originally posted on TV Insider | Last updated Mar 10, 2025 3:00 PM ET

After telling the story of the 2021 film Boiling Point with just one shot, director Philip Barantini and actor Stephen Graham have pulled off the same feat four times over in the limited series Adolescence.

The Netflix production, debuting Thursday, March 13, follows the story of a 13-year-old accused of the murder of a classmate while the boy’s family, his therapist, and a detective try to determine what happened. As he did with Boiling Point, Barantini filmed each of Adolescence’s four episodes in one continuous take.

“Personally, I find myself watching things, and it could be brilliant, but I’ve got one eye on my phone, so you have to really grab me,” Barantini explained to Radio Times. “I think what the one-shot does is makes you sit up, and you can’t take your eyes off it because if you do blink for a second, you miss something. It draws the audience in. It’s like going to a play. If you go to a play, you can’t be on your phone, yeah? And so you’ve got to pay attention to everything.”

Graham, who plays the father of Adolescence’s accused teen, told Radio Times the format combines the disciplines of theater and television. “Without sounding too pretentious, it’s the most Zen and in the moment you can ever be as an actor,” he reflected. “You have to be ready and in that moment to carry it right the way through — the intensity, the ups, the downs, the highs, the lows. You have to have worked it out with your director and with your other actors, and you have to really have an understanding of where it may go and what it might be, but also allow different things to pop in or pop out, like someone forgetting a line, or doing something unexpected.”

After Boiling Point, Barantini and Graham were old hand with one-shot productions — called “oners” in the biz — but the format was a new challenge for screenwriter Jack Thorne. “He’s done amazing theater, but with this, there is no curtain call,” Barantini told Deadline. “The camera is always following someone.”

The camera is also moving between locations. As he scripted the action, Thorne had to take travel times into account. “A really fun day was working out how long the car ride takes from the house to the police station and walking that route,” he told the site.

During production, Adolescence’s stars — and the show’s 320-odd extras — spent three weeks rehearsing each episode and one week filming that installment, per Deadline. Each week of filming entailed two takes per day, so producers could choose the best of 10 takes for each episode. Barantini also watched the filming in real time from a production vehicle disguised as a police van.

Though much of the camerawork takes place at eye level, Barantini also used a drone to get a bird’s-eye perspective. “I got this call from Phil who said, ‘Imagine if the cameras could fly,’” Thorne recalled. “So we strapped a camera to a drone that took off over traffic lights and then suddenly you’re at the murder scene. Emotionally it kicks you in the stomach.”

Thorne had to acclimate to last-minute changes like that, and he stayed on set during filming so he could make any necessary rewrites on the fly. “My resting heart rate was really high,” he told Deadline. “It was very complicated to write. I’m not allowed to cut away to go anywhere else.”

The writer seems pleased with the results, however, and he and Barantini will use oners — to a limited extent — as they collaborate again on the upcoming film Enola Holmes 3.

“The camera doesn’t blink in this show, and by being unblinking it allows for a certain rawness and honesty,” Thorne said. “The inability to cut away, the idea that all four episodes are partial, that allows you to tell a more complex story than if we were able to be inside the justice system. … What has resulted is a piece that uses the technical to unlock the emotional.”

Adolescence, Series Premiere, Thursday, March 13, Netflix

This article first appeared on TV Insider and was syndicated with permission.

More must-reads: