This Emmy season has seen the increase in lots of strong new programs that may well attract voters’ attention, from drama such as “The Pitt”, “Paradise” and “Landman” to Comedies “Studio”, “No one wants this” and “The Four Seasons.” But nothing has made the effects of “teens”, the four section British Limited series about a 13-year-old boy arrested in a classmate.
The series, created and produced by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham (who also plays as the boy’s father, Eddie Miller), has had more than 140 million views on Netflix, making it the second largest English -language series ever on the platform and just trailer “Wednesday.” It also topped all other programs by winning three awards on the Gotham TV Awards: Breakthrough Limited Series, Outstanding Lead Performance in a limited series for Graham and outstanding support performance in a limited series for Owen Cooper, who plays the boy and had never acted professionally before he was thrown.
All four episodes in the limited series are handled in single, uninterrupted hold of at least 50 minutes, shot twice a day for a week after two weeks of repetition and blockage. The first episode moves from a car to Miller’s home, where his son Jamie is arrested, to the police station where he is arrested and interrogated; The other omits if the halls in the school Jamie participated as a detective try to understand a brutal crime that seems linked to the online -incel culture for frustrated young men; The third is an upbringing conversation in prison between Jamie and a psychologist played by Erin Doherty; And the fourth follows the Miller family a year later.
“Our goal was to create something that would lead to conversation, and it really did,” Graham said in an interview with Thewrap. “We threw a beautiful stone in a pond, we will say, and the rippling effect has been …” He paused. “Well, we didn’t expect it to create a bit of a tsunami, do you know what I mean?”
That tsunami puts the “teens” in a similar place in the Emmy race for last year’s “Baby Reindeer”, another provocative British drama on Netflix. Thewrap’s Limited Series/Movies Awards Magazine devoted its cover story to CooperBut we also talked to Graham about the show’s rise, its varying final scene and why it never tries to explain the crime at the center.
When I talked to Jack Thorne, he said that one of your regulations from the beginning was that you did not want to do something that blames the parents. What were your priorities when you told this story?
I just wanted it to be a story that people could relate to. I think that when we see these stories about the news, we always think, “Well, it happens to other people.” And I just wanted the audience to get away and think, “it could happen to us, or it might happen to someone I know.” Having that kind of relationship with it, where it is a probability.
I didn’t want Jamie to come from a family where his father had beaten him as a child or was violent with his mother or his sister. I did not want his mother to be an alcoholic, or because someone in his family would have overthrown him in some way, form or form.
As a conventional type of narrator, I understand it. But I wanted to look at everything and say that we may all be a little responsible, including the education system.
The story was inspired by some specific incidents?
There were a couple of stories. It was a special incident in Liverpool, where I come from, with a young girl who was 12 who was stabbed to death by a 15-year-old boy. It was him and three of his friends in the city center. That was the case where I just thought, “Oh my God, this is something beyond me now. I don’t understand it. How can a young boy – and he is still a boy, they are not men – how can a young boy do it?” And then there was a girl who was Trans, whose name was Brianna, and she was attracted into a park in Leeds by a boy and a girl and they staked and murdered her brutally too. It was when I thought, “This thing is spreading. There is something that is not right about what happens to our youth today.”
It was the stories that I based my idea on, and that was what I wanted it to be. I wanted it to be a case where you think, “it could be my neighbor, or it could happen in my village or my city.”
We never pointed our finger at anyone. We just wanted to give an honest sight and a perspective on what things can be. If you look at it, everyone is responsible within our story.
And you immediately knew that the story would lend to the format to use section long, uninterrupted images?
Yes. Because we made a movie called “Boiling Point”, himself and Phil Barantini, our director. It started as a short film, just to try to get Phil an agent, and then it became a function. It was extremely successful in itself. It was nominated for best British film at BAftas, Phil was on his way to the best future director and I was nominated for best actors.
And I knew immediately, from the first episode, that I wanted to grab the audience. I knew it would be a police attack on a house. I felt like the energy and movement and the kinetic type of violent camera work would take us into a house. I always imagined that I was there and the audience thought the police came for me, obviously, and then they passed me into the bedroom in a 13-year-old boy. I just knew that from that moment we could grab the audience right away. And then in principle, through the technology and through that format with a shot, you have the opportunity to take the audience with you and make them realize what is happening in real time, in the same way that the parents realize what happens at the same time.
In the end, we always wanted the audience to think that there is no way that this boy has committed this terrible crime. And that was the beauty of Jack’s writing. Jack constructs characters so beautifully and so completely dimensional, do you know what I mean? That’s the moment when the boy gets out of bed and he is wet himself. As an audience, you know that a 13-year-old boy would do so if he gets weapons pointed to his face only in the morning.
At the end of the last section we go back to that bedroom with his father, your character. We have gone through this trip for four hours, and then it comes down to Eddie and his wife who sit in their room and try to know what has happened and why. And then Eddie goes into Jamie’s bedroom and picks up a filled animal, and it is an absolutely varied way to end the series. When you filmed that scene, did it feel like something special?
When you are in it, you don’t really think about it. Don’t misunderstand me – there are moments in section 4 where I sat in the van and we had a conversation on the way to the hardware store, and there may be a little break or something, and in your head you go, “Oh, this is going really well.” And then you think right away, “Go out, go out, get out of your head.” There are the little moments on the road, but then they are completely spread.
As for the last section, let’s not forget that the last episode was also our last time. It took 16. I do not mean to sound pretentious in any way, form or form, but there was a concrete energy about the whole thing. We had spent the summer together, and I’m not just saying this, but it was an absolutely beautiful job to do. Each individual member of the crew felt valued because everyone was on their game for each individual hold.
For the last time, myself and Christine (Tremarco, who play Eddie’s wife) just really appeared into it. It was the last time, it was Friday afternoon, the sun was out and we ended that night. There was a wrap party for later. We knew it was over after this particular tag, whether we got it or we didn’t.
And then many of the crew came up in tears. It was our last episode, and we knew it had something.
