Prompted by Hari Kunzru's review at the New York Review of Books (which I read afterwards) and a decent rating at IMDB. Co-written by Stephen Graham who featured in two of the four episodes and had a cameo in a third. He had a lot more to work with here than in Blitz (2024) and is the better for it. The direction by Philip Barantini and cinematography by Matthew Lewis are amazing: it looks like it was shot in seamless real time (right down to some improv in the second episode that seemed to paper over a timing issue) with a restless (sometimes drone-based) camera that avoided the usual drawbacks of handheld work. I wonder what Welles and Hitchcock could've done with this tech. Jack Thorne was the other co-writer.
The topic is the impact of toxic masculinity / the manosphere on young high schoolers. Kunzru spills many words on this. Owen Cooper is very good as an unregulated 13 year-old, the main focus of the plot and episodes one (a police procedural, somewhat like The Bill) and three (a two-hander psychological interview with a very game Erin Doherty). The second episode deals with present-day schooling but leaves us hanging about the goings-on in the life of Jade (Fatima Bojang) and others. Ashley Walters anchors the first two as a detective inspector who gets this new world explained to him by his son (Amari Bacchus); while Cooper and Doherty are excellent I enjoyed his performance the most.
The final episode doesn't work as well as the first three, and lays bare the limitations of a retrospective take. Graham is a bit less modulated as the father though there are some fine observations about his controlling behaviour (excused by an old-school indulgent love) of his wife (Christine Tremarco) and daughter (Amelie Pease) and his difficulty in being proud of his son who fails to express traditional masculinity but is not effeminate. I suspect parents have been bewildered by their children since at least the 1970s; these have little insight into why their boy broke bad except that maybe he spent a bit too much time on the computer in the privacy of his room. It's not at all clear why their son comes around to accepting that he did what he did, which is unfortunate as his psychological arc was likely more interesting than theirs.
Kunzru (and doubtlessly many many others) touches on the obvious issues raised here: the social Darwinism and punching-down that fuels incel culture, the irony of straight men seeking gender affirmation. He doesn't explore where the boy's violence came from (given his weediness) or the general lack of critical thinking (especially amongst those deemed intelligent or good students). It mystifies me why people feel entitled to other people; as Alvin Roth put it so well, many things you may want also have to want you.
Nandini Balial at Roger Ebert's venue: four stars. Cooper has a long career to come.
