DZ-118: ADOLESCENCE and Tension Through Questions — Transcript

The absence of plot does not mean the absence of tension. Hi, I'm Chas Fisher.

And I'm Stu Willis.

And welcome to Draft Zero, a podcast where two emerging filmmakers try to work out what makes great screenplays work.

And in this episode, we are going to be talking about the four-part Netflix series, Adolescence. In a way, this is a one-shot or a one-a-shot, as my joke is, but it's about all four episodes, so four-shot? I don't know. And the reason I wanted to do this, and it's obviously a series that's sparked a lot of conversation, right? And I'm interested in the craft tools that the show has used to, one, be so compelling to watch, but two, turn that compulsive watching into conversation. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. I would just warn everyone that we very much wanted to read scripts, but they're still not yet available. I'm sure they will be at least some available come awards season. So we're less looking about on the page tools. And while I think we'll obviously talk about the fact that they're all shot is in one take, like each individual episode is one continuous shot. While we'll talk about that, I think what we're going to really discuss is what is the effect of that? What is the intention of that? What are the constraints that it put on the writing, on the writers, and what tools, in particular I'm looking at, what tools did they bring to make that really work? So, I think we're sort of related in what our intention is here. I'm going to be somewhat selfish and say that I am writing a script that is sort of a contained chamber piece about a leadership meeting and hubris and faith and all those kind of things. So for me, I really wanted to come into this going less, how do I write this as if it's in one shot and more, how do I harness the power that they have found? Coming from it being in real time?

Look, when I first mentioned this to you, because I watched the first episode, it was like, I think we should do adolescence. It wasn't really about the one-up, right? Every episode is shot as one shot for those who haven't seen it. But hopefully if you listen to this, you've seen it. It was because that decision meant they had to use craft tools like French scenes and the mastery of POV and other things that we're going to talk about to kind of make it work. So, I think when I actually first watched it, it was less about why is this a conversation? It was more like, ooh, you know, we could use this to talk about narrative point of view and the point of view character per scene, you know, who is the character, the protagonist of the scene and French scenes, and I would have been happy. And then when I got to the end, I'm like, ah, there's actually this bigger question about like the show and how those narrative techniques have made it such a conversation piece. And so I think this episode is going to be really divided into two ha's, us talking about the kind of the macro, talking about the structure of the four episodes, how they work together and how I think, how we think they kind of lead us to this point at the end of the show that we kind of want to talk about it. And then I think we're going to deep dive into those tools.

Yeah.

Right.

And before we do, we put out a call to our amazing patrons to see if they had anything that they wanted us to cover. Our patrons as always bring you more draft zero more often and we got questions from julian one of which was how do they stop the camera becoming a protagonist and obviously i think some of that will drift into directorial commentary but i do think there's uh storytelling like narrative tools that they've applied as well julian also welcomed any comments we might have on sound design. And then Sandra, I'm not going to read out all of Sandra's comments. Yeah. Amazing and beautiful comments. Thank you, Sandra. But I just wanted to highlight certain things. And this is me editorializing or rather excerpting to suit my own narrative purposes. But she said the real time made it feel more authentic and captured a range of people caught up in the events and drawn into the mayhem feeling fenced in overwhelmed and all of that created a visceral reality and the reason why i've highlighted all those words is that i think this is quite clearly a melodrama uh i was up until.

Emma and i watched this over two nights and we were up on the on the sunday night after we watched it we were up to 3 a.m arguing about whether or not it was a melodrama i mean I mean.

Is Emma available to come in and put her points across, or are you going to paraphrase?

I mean, she's wrong, so I'm not going to... I'm not going to give you the airtime. Look, no, I'm being somewhat facetious about that. And I think it's because, one, we had done a really long episode, a three-hour episode, with Stephen Cleary on melodrama and passive protagonists. And that has colored our ways of thinking about melodrama. But we've also subsequently done other episodes on drama.

Yeah, sure.

But I think we'll save that discussion about melodrama until after we've kind of introduced the film.

Okay.

But I think it's worth you breaking down the key learnings of that melodrama episode. And we also did an episode, which I haven't re-listened to yet, on Oners.

Yeah. So, I mean, broadly, and feel free to chip in here, Stu, we were being guided by Stephen Cleary's definitions of what constituted a melodrama. And I think it's really helpful because it was trying to remove the pejorative nature to it, the stigma around it. And you used the word passive protagonist and Stephen in that episode corrected us and said, rather than passive, which has become a loaded term, he preferred still. And what I love about this in the context of adolescence is all the things I'm about to list, I think are clearly dramatized or utilized in adolescence. So, a melodrama story in contrast to the hero's journey story is about ordinary people going through massive life-changing events in the face of which they are either powerless or there is a massive cost to taking action and equally a massive cost to endurance. And so because these melodramatic stories are less inherently plotted and more focused on. The endurance or the cost of taking action, they become inherently more character-driven. And then in relation to one as we looked at single one-er sequences rather than whole stories in Goodfellas, Tintin, and Children of Men. And while I'm going to be fascinated to get my hand on the adolescent scripts, and maybe we'll do a back matter when they're finally out, none of those three scripts really drew attention to the fact that they were going to be shot as one-ers and instead we focused on how the writers were giving the intentionality and feeling on the page of shooting as a one-er and we discussed the words that came up repeatedly were immediacy and urgency one thing that we didn't discuss but i think stems from that is stakes when something's being shot in real time, I think you feel like narratively you can't escape. There won't be a cut to three weeks later. There's a kind of sense of terror that comes with watching something in real time. And I've said real time a few times, but you made the observation in that one episode that it's about unity in time of plot, character, camera, all these things coming together and happening at once. And to me, that's what I hope we actually dive into when we're looking at the macro stuff and the micro tools is they've made a decision to have unity and time in their narrative. And that comes with benefits, obviously, because we're all talking about it. And most of us found it to be extremely powerful experience. I'm talking about adolescence here. But then with that comes constraints that I think adolescence just seems to be so well executed that it shrugs off those constraints.

And maybe the answer is, you know, to the question of, you know, why is this film so watched and why are people talking about it is just because it's really, really, really, really, really, really exceptionally good. And, but I can't, you know, I mean, this is just really how my brain works. Looking at something and going, that is exceptionally good, to me doesn't help me as an artist. In the same way that I've got friends that are like shrug off and go, I don't think you can learn these things. Right? You're kind of born with it. And I'm like, well, that's a really useful thing because I don't know whether I'm born with it or not. All I can do is keep on applying myself. Right. But we should kind of summarize what adolescence is about and just to remind people.

That's the least. What are you looking for? You're making a big mistake. He's only a kid. Dad, I haven't done anything. He's a good kid. Jamie, I want you to listen carefully. What's going on? I'm going to start off with asking you. Do you know a girl called Katie Leonard? Yeah. Describe each other as friends then. Is she dead then? Why would you ask her? So do you think it would be okay if we speak about it? I haven't done anything. You're a good dad a great dad he hasn't been found guilty he's been accused.

How would you like to tackle it? Should we just summarize what the four episodes are? Or do we want to go one episode at a time and talk about genre and central dramatic questions?

I think we kind of summarize the whole- I mean, I'm just going to read the Wikipedia summary. And then we can kind of talk about the four episodes.

All right.

So, Adolescence is a show about a 13-year-old schoolboy who's accused of murder. Now, that is something that you kind of catch up to in the first episode. So it is one of those shows that I do think rewards the less that you know about it going in, the better. Because part of the structure of the first episode is leading us to that point about the accusation. That said, the first episode is very compelling, even if you know he's about to be accused, because it's almost the inciting incident of the first episode.

I watched it with Anna, and I had read enough about it that I knew what the outcome of the accusation was, and Anna didn't. And so Anna was surprised by the reveal at the end, whereas I was not surprised, but did not find it any less affecting.

I was surprised by the reveal and we'll get to that. But this is me riffing on the Wikipedia summary, which is obviously a crown source kind of summary, which is like in an English town, armed police raid a family home and arrest Jamie Miller, 13 year old boy and suspicious of murder of a classmate, Katie. Jamie is processed and held at a police station for questioning and then remanded in custody to secure training center. So, he is held at police station for questioning is the first episode. The remanded in custody at Secure Training Center is something we, is referred to in the second episode and we don't actually see until the third episode. Investigations at Jamie's school and interviews by a forensic psychologist undercovers Jamie's view towards women. That's interesting because this is skipping over the episode that is completely focused on Jamie's school, which is episode two. So it's the detectives going to the school to find the murder weapon to make their case against Jamie stronger. The third episode is the interview of the forensic psychologist. And then the fourth episode is, as Wikipedia explains, at home, Jamie's family deals with the community backlash against them as they work together to cope with Jamie's arrest and subsequent detention. So this is a show that does a couple of, it's got some tension in it, right? In just in the concept. So it's a show which every episode is more or less an hour of real time, one shot, but every episode jumps time quite substantially. So, it actually, the whole show takes over 13 months. So, it's not a show where it's four hours in real time. It's one hour, jump to the next day, jump to, I think it's a couple of weeks or quite a bit later, and then it's 13 months later.

I think it was, from memory, day one, day three, and then I think it's either like three or four months later, and then it's- Seven. Seven, there you go. And then it's 13 months later.

Yeah. And so, that's one of the tensions of the show, right? And one of the other tensions for me of the show is the one-shot, to me, I know it's a very personal thing, feeling contrived, right? To me, one-shots, and I think at some point I'm going to do a video essay about 1917 being the greatest video game adaptation of all time, because the single shot in 1917 means it's got to use kind of narrative aesthetics of video games to kind of get its characters through things, right? Right. 19, this manages to avoid some of that game stuff. And I actually have talked about that in the behind the scenes. There's a drone shot where they attach the camera to the drone, it flies off at the end of second episode two. And that's originally, it was scripted to be a shot that kind of goes back through the school, the empty school. And they decided against that because it was going to be feel too video gamey. And also I think there is that danger of those long single shots in a school are going to be reminiscent of Gus Van Zandt's Elephant, which is a film that is actually somewhat, to me, a precursor to this, right? In terms of it's a why done it.

But let's, so, let's. Just to be super clear, the 1917 had massive time jumps within it. So, it sort of wrestled with- I think he falls asleep or is knocked unconscious twice so that time can pass.

Yeah, video game-y.

Yeah, like it was really wrestling against its constraints in the way that I think by choosing to have- We can tell a story over a long time span, but that each individual episode is, you know, 40 or 50 minutes in real time gives them some real luxury in that structure.

And I will say the other tension in it, and the reviewer on Letterboxd put it better than I did when I was trying to explain it, is it's a social realism melodrama, which for Emma was like, how does that work? Right? But I'm going to get to the melodrama thing because I think the melodramatic elements don't actually truly emerge until the second episode. But I think they're established in the first episode because the show, the first episode, opens with the cop getting a message from his son talking about his son wanting to skip school.

More than that, um, have that bad stomach thing again. Time is it? 6am, that commitment. Don't want to go, does he? Yeah, he knows Tracy will say no, and I'm the soft touch.

So one of the important aspects of a melodrama, I guess we're going to start unpacking that, is which is you mentioned that Stephen talks about that it's ordinary characters. It's ordinary characters in extraordinary circumstances. That other shows, even detective shows, think of something like Mindhunter. He is an exceptionally gifted detective in Mindhunter, right? He is the one that is working out how to use forensic psychology to catch criminals, right? This isn't interested in these detectives being extraordinarily good. They're revealed to be good cops, but they're also revealed to be kind of given the case on a platter in a way, right? They get, they have very damning evidence. It's not them, you know, being Poiro about it, you know, they're just ordinary cops and it's already connecting them to the ordinary lives. But the, the structure of the first episode. And so I'm interested in the central dramatic questions of the show and how they shift over the four episodes. Right. I think the first episode is once Jamie is arrested, the question becomes, did he do it? That is the standard kind of premise question. And there is another show that I really like called In the Night Of, which is about a young man being arrested for murder and charged with murder. And the whole show is interrogating whether or not he did it. Okay. And that's kind of the, it's the mystery that drives you. And what's interesting is the adolescent's. Answers the question of, did Jamie kill this girl with a very definitive yes at the end of the first episode? And it shifts the show from being a whodunit to, and in the words of the creator, Stephen Graham, into a whydunit. And so, it closes that plot question. So, the first episode is very compelling to watch. It's a great procedural. You know, it's got a lot of those procedural beats with the detail that I really like. and then it has the plot question, but then it does something else. Once it answers the plot question, it sits in the emotional event of the episode. And the emotional event is, you know, I mean, I'm just reminding for people that have seen it, and if you haven't seen it, spoilers, but please just go and watch it, is obviously Jamie has his dad acting, has his, what's the particular term? Appropriate adult, right? And then the detectives reveal that they have footage of Jamie stabbing this girl, right? And then we sit with Jamie and his dad, Eddie, right? As Eddie kind of begins to realize that his son actually did this crime. So the emotional event is him realizing, right, it kind of pushes them apart at that point. I think that's a very clear emotional event and they have made a decision to sit in this because the show is going to be about the impact of what Jamie has done on the people around him, the ripple effects of that.

I'm terminating this interview at 7.12am. Let's go. Oh, my God. I'll give you two a minute. All right.

Can I make some observations about episode one?

Yeah, of course.

I agree completely that it is, that the central dramatic question is, did Jamie do it? And it is by far the most plotted of all four episodes.

Agreed.

There is a lot that happens. The point of view shifts repeatedly and very quickly.

It's thriller kind of narrative point of view shifting, right?

Yeah, but one of the observations I'd make is that we are very rarely in Jamie's POV in those moments. And here's some that stood out for me as particular moments. There's one where they're in the car from after Jamie's been arrested and his parents are going in a separate car to the police station. So, he's alone with a social worker and with the detective in the back of the car. And I think that is in Jamie's POV.

I haven't done anything. I haven't. Hey, hey, hey. We'll get into that conversation when we get to the station, okay? This is not the place to be speaking about anything like that. All right? Save all of this for when we get there. And say another word. I'm going to suggest something. When asked, you ask for a solicitor, okay? Hey, you can speak to your parents about it when you get to the station. It won't make you seem more guilty. Just for your best interests, all right? Jamie, this is Derek. Derek will be your appropriate adult for the purpose of this arrest, all right? Hey, Jamie. I'm from Doncaster Social Services, all right? Once you get there, the custody sergeant is going to ask you whether you want to keep Derek on or whether you want someone else, or you can even have one of your parents. It'll just be for your searches, bloods, any time you're talking to your solicitor, that sort of thing, okay? We won't prejudice your case, whatever you decide, mate. All right? Okay, Jamie.

But the, when he's being processed in the, um, at the front desk, the camera is often behind Jamie pointing at the, and the point of view character is pretty much this sort of administrative police person. Yeah. Similarly, one of the really grueling scenes is when they, the, uh, detects, and Jamie's 13, the police officers have to strip search Jamie and take forensic evidence. And in that moment, they hold really tightly on his father's face while we know what his father is looking at and we hear the detectives, the process that they're talking Jamie through and what he's going through. But we're not in Jamie's point of view at all. We can't even see him in that moment. We've got lots of point of view moments with the detectives, with the nurse character, with the lawyer coming and going. And then once we're in the interrogation, I still think we're almost more in the father's point of view. I mean, you could say it's fairly even in that, but the emotional event is the father's emotional event. at the culmination of that scene. So while I agree that it is definitely a procedural in the true sense of the word in that there's lots of procedure, but the procedure isn't about finding more clues. None of the procedures that we see are about discovering whether Jamie did it or not. They know before they've even arrested him. They've seen that footage and they know. We don't know as the audience, but what we're watching is the procedure of how to arrest a 13 year old boy not the procedure of finding out whether that 13 year old boy is guilty or not.

You had your breakfast son no okay i am it's 6 31 authorizing your detention so that the officers can preserve evidence by questioning you about the offense you are suspected of you can be held at this police station for 24 hours your detention here will be reviewed by an independent inspector on a regular basis so that you your solicitor or your appropriate adult can make representations about your detention at that review you understood all that son yeah okay good lad right let's get you to a cell so.

It's kind of interesting man and this comes to this tension that you've talked about it being a very heavily plotted episode but at the same time you're you're saying it's not about it's about the impact of the procedure yeah of arresting a 13 year old on everyone in that station yes because there is a detective who even says, man, juvenile cases are the worst, right?

I hate juvenile cases, man. No one likes them.

So this is focusing on the effect that this, procedure is having on all the characters. On Jamie as well, I'm not saying not, but it's not people trying to figure out whether Jamie has done it or not.

It's us.

That is the central dramatic question for the audience, but that is what none of the characters are trying to do, except the father.

And the lawyer, right?

Yeah.

The lawyer is trying to kind of represent him well, even if he goes, oh, they must have some pretty compelling evidence, you know, to be moving as quickly as they did.

But the lawyer's opening line is I'm not going to ask you whether you did it or not.

Well, I mean, that would be your legal advice, right?

I don't know. Here in Australia, we're like, as lawyers, it's like, we don't want to generally play those games. It's better for us to know everything. We can do our job better if we know everything than if our client is lying to us. There are some criminal lawyers who very much, you know, if I don't know, then I can lead the court wherever I want to lead them, essentially.

Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I feel like we might need to come back to this because it to me is this interesting thing of the first episode is a very classic thriller. You're discombulated, you're with the characters, right? You're going through this discombulating experience, you're playing catch up. So there's a lot of these plot questions about like what has happened, what is he accused of, you know, all these kinds of questions, which are kind of plot questions, kind of keep us hooked. When, as you say, from a kind of the objective of the cops or the super objective, and it's interesting in an interview with Stephen Graham, he talked about super objective. He very much approaches his writing as an actor. They know they've got him, right? So, I guess their question is they're just trying to make a good case, right? They're trying to get as much evidence so they can get motivation. That's what they keep on coming back to about- Because they- they clearly want to, you know, and that's going to be about whether this is manslaughter or, or, you know, first degree murder, right? So that's kind of an interesting tension in this episode.

So all I'm saying is for a very, very tightly plotted, very genre, feels like a police procedural, they have, interestingly, every single one of those scenes, none of them is actually about whether Jamie did it or not. And the one exception to that is where the father outright asks him before the interview happens.

I'm going to ask you a watch, okay? No matter what happened, no matter what you've done or you haven't done, from what you used to tell me the truth. Did you do it? No. Promise. Promise. Okay.

So here's the interesting question for me, because I think the other three episodes are different. Who is the protagonist of this episode?

I genuinely think it shifts. I think, obviously, the show opens with the detectives and there's very much scenes where the detectives feel like they take the first action in that sense. They are driving the plot because Jamie and Eddie are powerless, really. Everything just happens to them. They are not in charge of the, the plot. Uh, I think that closing scene, I do think it's about Eddie is the main character. Cause what we revealed at the end is that Jamie, Jamie knows what he's done. What Jamie doesn't know is that there's footage.

Yes.

Jamie doesn't know what they know, what they have on him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true. They're playing kind of- He's playing catch-up. I think you're probably right that Eddie's the protagonist, but it's an interesting question. It's very- What I would use the phrase micro-plotted episode. And what's interesting about jumping to the Force episode is that is actually a hero, kind of a hero's journey or a Harmon story wheel in its structure. Structure even though it feels the most character driven and it's actually got the most conventional kind of structure to it yeah and what's interesting about the second episode and i think we should get into that is the first episode is driven by an audience asking did jamie do it and the closest character i guess what it is is the closest character that he's aligned to the question the audience is asking is eddie so maybe that's why he feels like the protagonist of the first episode because did jamie do it it's kind of a quick i think he believes him but also So he kind of wants to know, I never, we're going to pause here and I'm going to say part of the reason that adolescence, I think appealed to me. And this is why I'm relating to the dad. Both my parents are high school teachers. A student, my mom taught a really rough school. One of the students left their school and stabbed another student to death on the dance floor. And this was in the nineties. And my mom was like, oh yeah, we could always just tell that kid was fucked up. And it's just, you know, a shame that no one could help him in a way that before he hurt someone. I was also in high school in the 90s, and I was the student representative on the school council, not the student's representative council, the school council, the governing body of the school. And there was an incident at the school. I'm sure I could talk about it now. It's been like 20 years where a student in what we would call hope economics, home economics, cooking, uh, a girl backed into his knife, uh, is what he claimed. And, but there was a history and the, and the boy was suspended and they kind of did investigation. And there was a history of this boy kind of targeting this girl. Uh, and the long story short of it is that she changed schools and he came back to school because his parents were just. Adamant that there's no way he could possibly have done anything wrong and they fought the school every step of the way. And I think they may even try to take the principal to court, but that was like after I had left. Right. And so there's definitely this sense of, I don't think Eddie is the parent that is like, I am just going to defend my child no matter what. He feels conflicted about it, which comes back in episode four, I think.

But it would have been a very different but interesting variation on the show if they were exploring the trial without having slam dunk evidence.

It would be a, yes, but it wouldn't be the show that has the conversation that this has started. I mean- For sure. Yeah. The Night Of is a older character. I think he's- Played by Riz Ahmed.

Looks to be in about his 30s, maybe early 20s, late 20s, sorry.

Yeah. And it's dealing with facts that he's kind of like a racially profiled because he's Pakistani. So, there's dealing with racial elements within New York. It's actually a remake of a British show called Criminal Justice. So, I do think the fact that this show becomes more melodramatic and is more interesting in character theme is part of the reason it's had these conversations, because it is designed to create those conversations. The first episode ends with the reveal. He did it, and it is incontrovertible evidence that he murdered her. The question that is, which is put in our mind in the second episode, is the detectives want to know his motivation. The murder weapon, they want his motivation. The murder weapon is the kind of external plot device for them to go and understand his psychology.

Jade, we are really grateful you agreed to talk to us. I agreed to die. And I thought I just got pulled off lunch. Look, we can tell you that we have arrested one suspect. Sorry. Yeah, Jamie. But we need some more information, both on the murder weapon, which we don't yet have, and why the suspect did it.

And look, I don't work in the British, I mean, A, I'm not a lawyer. I have a law degree, but I'm not a lawyer. B, I don't work in the British criminal justice system. But I looked at them and went, I mean, they're talking about like having the murder weapon and his motivation is going to make it a, you know, make the case and add some urgency to it. But I mean, I don't know. That's, it seems they've got pretty definitive advantage of the insides did it. It's just to the degree to which he's going to plea bargain or whatever. But the show isn't talking about it on that level. It stops being about the procedural elements in the second episode. And so there's two things that happens in this second episode. There is this plot question of, will those detectives be able to find the murder weapon and uncover the motivation? Motivation is a really interesting thing to uncover because we're talking about character. So we're assigning a plot question that is about revealing another person's character.

Yeah.

Which is kind of how Jack Thorne, the co-writer and co-creator of the show, explains much more simply.

Adolescence is not a whodunit, it's a whodunit. How did this boy end up in this place?

And interestingly, if you go back to episode one, these are the questions the detectives themselves are asking, prompting the audience to wonder, whodunit?

Do you want to give us a reason why? Hmm? Why would you do something like this? Jamie, do you want to explain? You want to say sorry to Katie's mum, who I had to talk to just past midnight last night while she was sobbing on the floor because her daughter is gone. Do you want to say sorry to her?

But let's get back to episode two.

Yeah.

The son of the detective is conveniently at this school, right? That is a decision that they have made because they want to explore the relationship between this detective, Luke, Detective Luke Bascombe, Detective Sergeant Misha Frank. So Detective Bascombe, Luke's son is at this school.

You only got a kid in the school? Yeah. Yeah. Adam, right? Yeah. Yeah, no, he's off if he didn't know. He didn't get any cheekbones, did he? I don't see what that has to do with him. Can you tell me about him?

And what is interesting about this episode on the macro level is that he doesn't solve the plot until he has an emotional event with his son. The emotional event is that his son's disconnected from him. We get this sense that they're distant from each other. Well, we don't even get a sense. We see it. And it's only later on when him and his son are in a room and he basically learns that he needs to listen to these kids that he's able to, quote unquote, solve the plot.

Right someone said something to you because listen i've got sniffer dogs people now in drains and all sorts of stuff going on ads it's not going well because you're not getting it, what am i not getting you're not reading what they're doing what's happening what are you talking about insta you've been looking at insta right.

I mean, he still doesn't find the knife.

No, but he finds the boy, which is Ryan, that says that Jamie used his knife. So, to me, it feels like, well, that's close enough. They found the person that says, yes, he had my knife.

They do actually resolve the two. The central dramatic question posed at the beginning of the episode, will these detectives find out what motivated Jamie and will they find... You know, some further evidence to, to convict Jamie from going to the school.

And I think that is just tied to a character question, which is, will Luke, and it's not Nisha, it's, it's, will Luke connect with his son, right? Yeah. It's a character question that is posed and it's answered by the end of the episode because they go off to get, um, uh, basically a snack, fries from a Chinese, chips.

From a Chinese takeaway. Take away.

But earlier, like, I mean, that resolves their relationship, but it's when they spend time together that he's able to learn Ryan. You know, he learns about the emojis and the secret language of teenagers and that leads him to Ryan, et cetera, et cetera. So, the emotional event changes it.

Well, I was going to make an observation that while this second episode does, I feel, feel more of a piece to the first episode than it does to the later two, in that we still have actual, we've got a lot of characters. They are, we're following detectives undergoing a procedure. And we still do shift POV away from Bascombe. Like, not as much as the first episode, but in particular, we are following one of Katie's best friends. So, we're introduced to her through the detectives interviewing her. And what I really appreciated was Jade almost hung a lantern on perhaps one of the arguments that could be leveled at the whole theme of this. They're exploring the violence, manosphere, misogyny, youth being affected by social media. These are all these themes they're talking about. But Jade actually calls out why we always, and I think Detective Frank as well at the end says, so those two female characters in this story is like really bugs me how we're always talking about the killer here, not about the victim. And if we are talking about the victim, we're trying to find this, you know, what it is that they did that was asking for it.

Are you saying that she didn't like him because we've got Instagram posts from her that suggest that they were friends? So you're trying to blame this all on her? Is that it? No. Well, we've got video. Everyone knows. I don't know why I'm talking. It's okay. Look, we're not asking you to talk bad about it. You are! You are can hear in all of you. No, Jade. Can I go now, Lowell School? Their politeness. Well, I'm really feeling polite today. Can I go now, Miss Lowell School? This is phenomenal.

But we do, there is a point where we actually leave to see Jade in a scene with the teacher with none of the detectives around at all. And then we just learn about Jade's life, essentially.

Yeah. And so, this is where I think the show is becoming more melodramatic in this episode. This is kind of, this is melodrama slash detective. And I think it is not, melodrama is part of every, is part of the first three episodes. They're kind of a genre mix. The first one is police detractive, like the procedural or an ob-doc kind of style and genre. Using melodramatic tools to explore the question of what is the impact of this juvenile crime. I'm just processing a 13-year-old for the accusation of murder. The second episode is very clearly about the impact on other students, about having both a girl from the school being killed and the accused murderer, which all the kids are convinced he actually did it, which probably tells you all you need to know, really.

Me and Taylor told me we need to open a grief support room. With security guards and social workers now, are we great? Just worry about the impact it's going to have on the kids, you know. It's a lot. Keep an eye on it. Yeah.

Okay. And the show makes a, it almost does the children of men thing where it's in the one-er. It will walk past a bunch of kids, right? Or kids talking to themselves. Part of the kind of handover technique, which we'll unpack a little bit later, is that we'll follow a group of kids having these conversations. Right. So, it's bringing, by exploring the world, it's beginning us to make us ask questions and think about the world. This is the kind of, the thematic stuff. And all these kids are powerless, and so are the teachers. And one of the things I think is melodramatic, and it still is my argument against Emma. So, Em's main thing about this show not being melodrama is she saw melodrama as requiring, like, an exaggeration of performance, right? So, the emotions are all very exaggerated. The example she kept on giving was Australia as an example of a modern melodrama that is also kind of got stereotypical kind of characters, like the big moustache twirling villain, et cetera, et cetera. Right. And that to me is a form of melodrama, you know, soap operas, et cetera. But the kind of stuff that we're talking about, which is ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances are clearly here interested in exploring the impact of these events on people that can't actually change the plot is definitely what's going on here.

Yeah. And even if we look at the more plotty element of this episode too- Will the police detectives find the knife or find out, uh, Jamie's motivation? The, the first half of the episode is basically teaching us the futility of the exercise that they're going under. They, you know, repeat the same speech in two different classrooms to various different levels of ridicule, including, uh, one kid, uh, oinking at them. There's a fire well a fire alarm goes off the entire school files out there's a fight involving jade and ryan one of jamie's friends out in the parade ground then all the kids file back in and the the detectives resume their mission and it's then that adam luke uh detective d.i bascom's son intervenes.

I just want to kind of come back to finish my point which which connects to what you said because emma is a i've been speaking of how this connected em's a high school teacher who's also doing a master's of psychology her thesis was only social behavior disorder she works in education development psychology like and so the the school playground scene she was like the teachers seem too incompetent they're a little bit too yelly right in terms of how to maintain the kids they're exaggerated and i'm like she was like hiding i'm like exaggerated they've made the choice to exaggerate these teachers to make school, make the kids feel more difficult, right? And, you know, there's some good behind the scenes where they tell the kids just to ignore the teachers. That was kind of their direction to the extras. So there's probably an improvisational quality to what the kids are doing.

There's 300 kids, as well as all of the teachers or the chaperones that are being led around by lots of dressed in ADs. So, it's got to be really meticulously planned out. You're going to get instructions from the cast teachers to get back in line. Do not listen to them.

But there is a sense that they have made that decision to hide the performances of the teachers, make them slightly more incompetent than they are in terms of maintaining discipline in the classroom, because they wanted to make the school feel like a prison, which is what one of the characters says. It's got a narrative and thematic purpose in terms of what they're saying.

And it makes both the teachers, the detectives, and the students feel hopeless. That there is no way out of this. And it was interesting. It was in that, again, in that, you know, we'll probably come back when we're talking about the micro and we're talking about plotting. But it was a beautiful scene between the two detectives where they they take a a beat out of the the plot story like they're about to head back to the like to leave the school and they are just talking about the school and bascom is seeing it as like a waste of time that all the kids are uh watching screens and no one's learning and it's like a terrible experience and frank is like well this was like my school and there will be a few good teachers in there and there'll be a few good kids in there interesting having them for a scene removed the plot questions and it starts out asking some character questions of the two of them it's like what was your experience of school kind of thing but very quickly becomes them talking essentially about thematic stuff because it removes the it resolves the character questions about what they're asking each other almost instantly and so then the rest of that scene is just kind of talking about what is this show about essentially through the the resolution of both the the plot questions and the character questions within that scene do.

You know what i don't like about all this go on right the perpetrator always gets the front line a man raped a woman we followed jamie's brain around this entire case, right? Katie isn't important, Jamie is. Everyone will remember Jamie, no one will remember her. That's what annoys me, that's what gets to me. I think you're wrong i think we're here for katie we're here for our parents we're here to get answers it's our job to understand why you can't understand why do you actually think you can we've got the video we know what you did you're not gonna know why mate look at all the things we've seen you are not gonna know why you just won't okay misha look go back to the station, i'm gonna go and talk to ryan one last time yeah but you've spoken to ryan i know but he's, not saying something i know there's more you coming or not sorry.

I feel like i've jumped into a micro observation there but.

No no i mean i'm probably stop it breaks up my lecturing and we'll come back because these things are connected right ultimately the macro and micro have to work hand in hand for them to execute um so by episode three we've jumped seven weeks we follow a new protagonist so i think in the preview seven months sorry i think in the second episode there's a clearer protagonist and that's um luke baskin yeah right detective luke baskin in the same way i think episode three has a newer a clear protagonist which is the forensic psychologist uh bryany i think her name is who comes to interview jamie.

I've been employed by your team but i don't work for you i'm writing an independent that's a very important word okay an independent pre-sentence offense report which the judge will read in order to get an understanding of you and your understanding of the charges okay.

What's interesting is they make it kind of clear that she's actually working for his team so she's not there to elicit a confession right because there is a version of this where it's him being interviewed by more senior detectives or police forensic psychologists or something like that and they're trying to get something out of him for the case by making her work for his team they're making this more about an exploration of character in fact she just constantly says she wants to know his understanding right that becomes a running joke i.

Am just here to get an understanding of your understanding and i understand that you need to have an understanding of my understanding, Go on.

Her plot question is to understand his character, which really means that this is, again, sitting in that plot character thing. And really, I would say it's just a character question. And she's just got a motivation to kind of get in in there. Because as we have talked about when we've explored plot character stuff and plot, plot is got a very clear, like the bomb is turned off. Like there's very clear yes or no kind of answers to plot. You know, have they discovered who did it? Have they discovered the murder weapon, et cetera? Does she, how can you dramatize that she has an understanding of who he is?

Right? Yeah. There's a lot of setup in this episode. I mean, it's in a way the simplest of the three episodes. She's a clear protagonist and remains the protagonist throughout. And we say in her POV the entire time. There's no other storyline. There's no other central dramatic question.

I mean, there's the kind of the interesting stuff around the guard being slightly flirtatious with her, kind of getting in her space, et cetera. But we'll come to that as part of the micro strategies.

And there's a lot of setup of her before Jamie is brought in. And I think that's possibly one of the narrative reasons the guard exists where it's, you know, it's establishing that she's got to do an assessment of Jamie. It's about his ability to, can he be criminally liable or not? Can he be responsible for his actions? Yes, she's been chosen by Jamie's team, but she gives an independent report to the judge. And it also establishes that she's the second psychologist to do this with Jamie.

You're on five visits. Yes. And you know what you're going to say in the report? I wouldn't be here if I knew that. Well, the other one, the other one of you, we only needed three. You can't say any more. It's important I don't know anything about what the other psychologist says, does or thinks. It's about making the right assessment, not the fastest. Sorry, I'm just being an idiot. No, that's just the way I work.

So there's a lot of setup before they get into the cheese and pickle sandwich, as it were, of the scene.

I mean, the cheese and pickle sandwich is a great representation that effectively it is, the cheese and pickle sandwich dramatizes the emotional event. Right? Which is, at the beginning, she is trying to build rapport with him. She brings him food. She's kind of being like a little bit nurturing towards this kid. And then at the end, she is so disturbed by what she's experienced that she can't even like touch the pickle sandwich. Right. She's kind of disgusted by it. So that is a way to dramatize the emotional event that has occurred, which is that, I mean, I mean, the good thing about emotional events as we talked about is they don't actually have to be that precise.

It's.

Character stuff right it doesn't have to be like is the have they saved the world no it's like i think she's kind of a little bit terrified of him.

Yeah absolutely or terrified of what he represents i mean there's you talk about the emotional event there's two times where james jamie stands over her while she remains seated and he's yelling at her and it is yeah deliberately terrifying but she does not in those scenes in those moments in her performance reveal any emotion in one of them the guard interrupts the first one and she takes a beat she goes out ostensibly to get another hot chocolate but ends up just breathing uh going and checking on wanting to see what jamie is doing while she's not in the room yep and then coming back in having forgotten the hot chocolate.

Yes.

And it's clear that she's missing some objectives in her questioning in the second- buildup is more pointed. And to me, it was really clear that she had to establish Jamie's understanding of his understanding of a couple of things. Did he understand that Katie was dead? Did he understand what that meant? Did he understand what being found guilty of killing katie meant so she was driving at some clear objectives and that escalated in the second.

Part of.

That because i think she felt uncomfortable and wanted to bring it to a close sooner.

So she had kind of somewhat plot objectives is what you're saying yeah.

But they're not very clear.

No so.

We don't know when she when she's completed the plot right we i mean we do when she tells us it's up right we're done i i have what i need but we don't know what the you know you're talking about the game of the scene we don't know what the win conditions.

Of

The scene are.

No because this episode is about all about the why done it and the why yeah it's a character question that is related to the thematic questions right and so this is an exploration of all that stuff and look it's got structure the midpoint i guess of this episode is when he loses his temper with her so we see that the first aspect of like jamie breaking something and we're like oh fucking you know because again we at this point we've seen the footage but we are also wanting to learn more about Jamie the first episode told us definitely that Jamie didn't, It didn't give us the why. And we're going in here aligned with her. So, this is actually similar to how the first episode has worked. Right. And I guess in a way, the second episode too, because the detectives in the second episode are interviewing, are talking to students. They're not combing the school looking for the murder weapon. Right. They're not kind of using sniffer dogs or whatever. Right. They're actually just talking to kids to find out what the kids know, if any of the kids have found something.

Right. And they're not even, like, other than Jade and Ryan, they're not having one-on-one interviews. They're going and making class announcements, begging for- Information. Information to be brought to them by school students who are ridiculing them. Like, yeah, it's very different to this one.

No, but I'm just saying, like, it's different, but also at the same time, because it's them literally interrogating characters.

Yeah. And she manages to accidentally twice elicit a confession from Jamie, which gets him really upset. But that's not her intention. Her intention is just to ascertain his understanding for some procedural purpose. But we are not, we're giving her a whole lot of clues and inklings. But like I said, we don't know what the win condition is. So we're coming into this scene where she has an objective that is allowing us as the audience to access the why done it.

Yes.

But it's not, that's not really her purpose. She's not there to understand Jamie's motivation. She's there to understand his, uh.

Understanding.

Yeah.

But in the absence of anything else, we're going to, we're, we're latched onto it.

Oh, for sure. And it's, it is riveting. And it is, I mean, I think it's going to be very few listeners who have listened to this far without having seen the show. But it was in this episode that I was so keenly aware of how well cast Jamie was. I mean, not only is he giving an incredible performance, but he is a tiny 13-year-old boy who genuinely pulls off being frightening. I don't think she was ever physically frightened in that she thought that she couldn't physically escape the situation, but I think she was frightened of his rage, of... What he represented of how a 13-year-old boy could become this.

Well, I mean, it's got the whole, you know, I mean, I'm just going to connect it to stuff in your life. Like, it's like, how do you deal with violent elderly people? It's like, how do you deal? I mean, this is why juvenile offenders, I think, are so shocking to, you know, I mean, they constantly come up in the Australian media, right? Because it is like, how do we deal with them?

But, okay, to take a step back while we're still talking about the micro, this episode three is still somewhat sitting in crime procedural. Like it is an interview with a criminal.

Oh, yeah.

Right? It's pretty classic genre trappings, right?

Yes. I think all three, I think the first three episodes are kind of crime melodrama.

Yeah. But I think with each successive episode, the central dramatic questions have become less clear and less relevant.

I think they're clear, but they're not plot.

Yeah.

I just don't think they're driven, like, they're not as driven by plot.

Yeah.

The plot starts becoming less and less pressing to the point where there's, like, does it actually make a difference? Like, what's the urgency, the goal stakes and the urgency of this? She is writing a report.

Yeah.

Right?

And it feels like she could come back as often as she wants to get it done. It's not like the report's due in 25 minutes or anything like that.

Yeah, she's just made the decision that she will probably get what she needs from him at this point, which she does.

Yes.

You know, much to his disappointment. So, it's just an interesting conversation around genre. And then I think in the last episode, it does do a genre shift.

Yeah.

Right? Into kind of like Ken Loach kind of British social realism, right, with melodrama. And it's got a very light plot. And this is me talking about it being like, I guess, Little Bit Hero's Journey a little bit. And this is me just being amused by it, because when I thought about it, I was like, oh, it's very melodramatic, like, kind of a little bit mumblecore.

Lisa, get downstairs, love! What? Be calm to him. We're going to Wainwright. Can't I just stay here? No, you can't stay here. Someone's just vandalised the van. Who knows what they'll do next? Not leaving you here on your own. Why would I want to go to Wainwright? Because I'm asking you to go to Wainwright. Because I've got the breakfast sign. Girls, please, please, girls, do me a favour. Please, help me out, love, I'm saying. All right. All right, yeah, we'll all go. Yeah? We'll get the table back. Eh? We'll get the table back. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we'll get the day back, eh? Yeah, it's my birthday, isn't it?

So the fourth episode is spending time with the family on Eddie's birthday. He discovers that there is graffiti on his van, and he gets the whole family in the van, and they drive off. So they're literally leaving the ordinary world into the extraordinary world, and then he kind of comes back from that experience changed.

Right?

But there is just enough of a plot engine to force these characters together. It's not just being with them in their grief.

I mean, the plot question is, will he get the van cleaned?

Yeah.

Right? But it's essentially it. But that plot question, there is a good scene, like a solid scene. It feels like before that, he even discovers that, like it's his daughter who discovers that his van's been graffitied and she tells him. It opens on him being in his shed, he finishes a cup of tea while he's outside tipping the tea into a flower pot, comes in and his wife's cooking him a special breakfast for his 50th birthday and they have a cute scene together. And all through that scene, obviously, the inciting incident has yet to happen. But I think in the absence of the inciting incident, what is driving the scene from the audience coming in, we also know it's 13 months later. So, that's the first thing that we are told, 13 months later. And I think all we're being told as an audience to ask is what is the impact of what Jamie has done on this family?

And.

That question is resolved and it is a it is a character question it is a melodrama, question it's not a a plot question at all.

No i mean the as you said the plot question is really light right yeah as in like it is a clear question can he can't get that off his van and the answer is it turns out is no right right at.

The end he's like i'll get it re-sprayed.

Yes. Yes.

Like almost none of the drama that was driving him in his panic and his rage was necessary.

And that is the midpoint of the episode is him losing his shit at the, and so then it becomes about the impact of his violence on the family. And then we're with the characters and there is also an emotional event at the end of this episode.

Yeah.

Which is the kind of the, the family, I mean, enduring, I guess, which is coming back to our melodrama episode. We talked a lot about endurance and, you know, what is the price of enduring these, what happens to them? And it's their, one, their decision to stay.

Yeah.

So there is this question about whether or not they move, which is not a, which can be a plot question, but the way it's presented is as a character question, right? Or a question of values between the wife and Eddie.

This isn't going to get any better. Me mum says she can get you work. I don't need your mum to get me work. What would I want your mum to get me work for? Hey, I've got work here. Love, I've got lads that depend on me. No, I know that. Love, she's got college, hasn't she? Right? Do you want to take her out of college? Do you want to ruin her fucking life as well? Hey, look, do you think moving back to Liverpool, it'll be any better? Because I promise you now, it'll be 10 times fucking worse, and you know that. You know that, love. You know it'll be worse. We've done nothing wrong, have we? Have we done anything wrong? No. No, so we're not moving.

And so the daughter then kind of intervenes to say that she wants to stay.

Or that there's no point in moving.

Yeah.

But we're staying here. We're not moving. We can't move. Be cool too, though. Mum, mum, if we move, it'll be better for a bit, but then someone's just going to find out something. And then that, that something, that something's going to be everything, and then it'll just be even worse. You know, it's Jamie. Jamie's ours. It's new.

Yeah.

And so there is a, you know, that question is raised and resolved, but it's not really a plot question. It's a dramatization of, yeah, what is the impact?

Yeah. The van thing is interesting because it's not a strong plot in the sense of forcing the character to do something, but the character's reaction to it becomes a driver, right?

Yeah.

And it's interesting because it gives him kind of power. Like in a way, Eddie feels like he's got power in this episode. He's getting the, you know, he's ordering the family into the van. He goes in to get the paints, kind of threading, you know, finds the youths that are responsible.

Oh, I mean, I can relate to this so hard because when I'm in a heightened state, all I want to do is take action. I cannot sit still. And he is in the same way. He just has to take action. He cannot sit with this.

Yeah. And it's beautifully observed. I thought it was really interesting how, I think one of the things they did, and this is almost like a review observation, that what they did with Eddie, which is really interesting, is I definitely get this sense of that he's someone who's actually worked on his anger management, right? And I feel sympathetic for him because he fights so hard to not hurt those kids. He's still scary as fuck. And also his, and the impact on his wife, I think, Amanda, I think her name is, you know, that she's lived up with someone and like, she kind of, I guess, loves the, loves him for the fact that he's tried to be a better father than his, than his father. And, you know, he is, but he, it's still not enough. So it leaves us with, and they ask each other questions that become very active by them talking through these issues as a character level. That's kind of why the episode and the show kind of launches these conversations, right? Particularly in the last episode. I think if this episode was like episode two, right, and then we went back to something else, I'm not sure if the show would have, I mean, it's purely speculative, of course, have the kind of conversation started because it very deliberately ends with this question around the parents. Have they done enough? What is their responsibility for these kids, et cetera? And it is very happy to leave it unresolved.

I just want to latch onto that because that question, that specific aspect of the character question. So we've got the broad, I mean, as we said in the beginning, this fourth episode is very much in Eddie's point of view. I think there's only one moment I can remember of the whole episode where we're not in Eddie's perspective. And it's just a moment where they're coming in from back from the hardware store. They've had the violent altercation. He's had the drive to calm down. They've had the call from Jamie where Jamie has told them he's going to change his plea to guilty. Eddie goes inside first and we stay with Manda as she's hanging up her coat and she cries.

Yeah great paul in fact stephen graham and jack thorne talk about that as being in one of their favorite moments in the whole series.

For me one of the most beautiful moments sorry is just to pick up on that point is in episode four when we follow them on a journey and they come back and it's the most simplistic of things but it's to me it's the most beautiful moment and it's when and Christine hangs a coat on the peg. And it's just, you know, within the context of about, what, 30, 40 seconds, she gets to pour this immense amount of emotion, after everything she's just experienced on that journey, but also all of the baggage she's been carrying from the moment that the police raided the house and arrested their son, and she just lets that all go. And then she pulls herself back to get there and she walks up the stairs and we get to see that as an audience you would never really get to experience that within the context of how we experience it if it wasn't this formula you know you just wouldn't be able to. Alfred Hitchcock has got this quote he says dialogue is just the words actors say while their faces tell the story which is something I've always believed and in this show, the faces carry everything that you know like you know and and and unlocking unlocking the need to see inside what she's feeling at that moment is as simple as just seeing a put up a coat yeah.

And that i think is the only moment in the whole episode when we're not with eddie and in his perspective she goes up and joins him in the bedroom and it's an incredible two-hander scene. But it's in that scene that they raise the question of and and answer it for themselves is how responsible are we as parents for Jamie and they're wrestling with it because like uh Eddie says like my father beat me with a belt and and they don't go into this level of detail but he's like but I didn't go and kill anyone and here I am trying to make myself a better person but I created Jamie and they're they're wrestling with that question and it's only, I'm not I think there would have been so many ways different ways that they could have got to that same scene with these characters in this situation 13 months later but they've chosen for this particular episode to wrestle with eddie's sense of responsibility of masculinity there's a lot about eddie's own relationship with his own father and then just like that beautiful ending scene where he's in his son's bedroom crying in his son's bed saying and apologizing to his son, saying, I failed you. Yeah. I mean, now I'm interested, having done all that, how do you think that these raising and resolution of these character questions have for you raised thematic questions?

Well, okay. So- Why am I watching this is what we've talked about with theme, right? And I think the why in this case, the why done it is why did this character do what they have done to me is a thematic question. It's a more specific version of a thematic question than why am I watching this? But I think maybe whys are theme, right? Thematic questions just have a why in them. Why am I watching this? Why did the character do this? Why these are the consequences of that? Because they kind of make us think about the broader world, right? So, I think this kind of show has a character theme. I haven't watched the latest season of White Lotus, but I think if you go through and watch White Lotus season one, two, and probably three, they've got similar character theme stuff. Because characters, one, can ask questions that speak, make us prompt questions, right, when they're talking about their dilemma. But particularly if we're interested in behavior, that's going to naturally talk to theme. I mean, I've talked before about one of the reasons I like crime as a genre is crime exists as a really interesting intersection in society, right? Like crime is a constructed ideal, idea, right? That kind of taps into, and criminality, what it taps into psychology, taps into social, you know, norms, traps into sociology and all these things that you can explore through crime dramas, which is why I think they're such a great genre. I mean, we do talk about this, like, you know, there's so many sci-fi stories that detective investigating a crime in this interesting sci-fi speculative fiction world, right? That kind of works because one, not only does the detective have a driving purpose and as a point of view character, but their job is to be in enforcing the rules of that society, right?

Yeah.

Or reacting against them. So I think thematic characters, Character and theme can be related, particularly in stuff that is drama. And when we're talking about melodrama, if we're interested in stuff that is about the cost of enduring shows that are about the impact of crime, it's going to make the audience ask a lot of questions. And this show can plant seeds.

Yeah.

Right. And it can do, and it can be incomplete the real time. And this is a quote from Jack Thorne, one of the writers on the show. Because he was like, what I love about the technical restraints of the one shot is it lets the story be incomplete. If I can't cut anywhere, then it actually takes the pressure off showing you everything. You don't actually have to show us everything. You can't do it. And we've got the reason to not do it, to not have the omniscient camera, right?

We knew from the very beginning that it was going to be a one shot series. And it didn't complicate the writing at all, actually. One of my heroes is Alan Aitbourne, the playwright, and the way that he uses the technical to free the story was actually the sort of thing that I kept returning to all the time, that there's this kind of beauty to go, okay, I'm in a corridor now, what the hell do I do? And being able to tell an incomplete story is actually a real privilege that in TV, the aim is always to go, okay, we need to understand everything. We need to understand everything that's going on all the time. We can cut anywhere, we can go anywhere, we can see everything. So let's go inside the legal process. Let's go inside. Eddie is feeling at any time of the day. Let's see everything and actually by only being able to see some things it sort of allows you to have a more profound story. It sort of encourages an audience to sit forward and it encourages you as a writer to to to challenge yourself as to as to what is the important pieces to show. What is the pieces that are going to unlock a conversation? What other pieces that are going to make people think, you know.

And I think that means that they can walk past that conversation in the hallway with the kids and one of them can bring up, um, Andrew Tate or one of the teachers can bring up, that was one of the teachers that brings up Andrew Tate, but one of the kids took about Ripple and they just don't have to come back to it because we're not going to see those kids again.

Yeah.

Right. So they can just float this thing, right. Blow this bubble of an idea in the air and kind of move on. Right.

Yeah.

And I think that is a really good, powerful combination of technique impacting the thematic purpose of this, because the camera is about being immersive and about bringing us into a world. And so, these questions, these characters that Mander and Eddie are asking of each other, we don't expect them to answer, because the show, particularly by the fourth episode, is clearly told us we're only spending one hour with them, and we know that these characters are going to be with their grief for a long time. So we don't, the story up there may be a feature film, which is about a parent coming to terms, you know, I mean, we need to talk, you know, we need to talk about Kevin. Same kind of idea, I guess, but I haven't seen it. So I don't know whether she ultimately comes to terms with that or not.

I would make an observation. I think, you know, this is so clearly melodrama, but that's neither here nor there. I think a show that deliberately has fewer and fewer plot questions as it progresses and really focuses on the character questions, but does to an extent. I know you're saying that they're unresolved or not necessarily completed, but I think it has fewer and fewer of those questions and also shows us the futility. I mean, almost by telling us that they're impossible to answer, it does make us step back and ask these thematic questions. You know, it's not to say that every melodrama will be asking thematic questions, right? Just by focusing on impossible to resolve character questions. I think this show in particular does, you know, that second episode to me, it broadened the world out and introduced us to all these characters that just sort of come and go, like Ryan, like Jay, like these teachers and even Adam. Right? the detective's son. So, it raises them up as all examples and paradigms of this sort of uncaring world. And it's by being so shallow and superficial as that second episode is, and I mean that in a good way, right? We're not taking deep dives into who Ryan is. We're not taking deep dives into who Jade is. We're not taking deep dives into who Adam is in the same way that we are with, you know, Jamie and Bryony in episode three, and then the Miller family in episode four. It is forcing us to go, what is this show about? Why is it showing us these things? Right? And I think really importantly for me, this fourth episode, what it does, what it has done by and triggering the discussion that it has is right up until that episode. We could have squarely blamed Eddie for Jamie. We had not been shown anything really about Eddie's character as an audience that would have made us go, oh, well, he's just the product of an angry man or a misogynist, right? And what that fourth episode does is it so clearly, it shows a man who loves and respects It's his wife and his daughter who has experienced violence but not perpetuated it on his son, who feels anger but is dedicating himself to overcoming it.

He's still violent.

Yeah.

I don't think you can say he's not.

No, no. He assaults those two kids, but he never touched his son. No.

He doesn't punch them, but he picks up the kid and you can see he doesn't throttle him.

Yeah.

Takes out his anger on inanimate objects, right? Like he redirects the anger to the van and, you know, he may be threatening, but.

But importantly for me, by doing all of that, it's telling us as an audience, this could be you.

Yeah.

These are not monsters creating a monster. They are reinforcing that these are run of the mill everyday family. And so it forces us to go, what would I do in this situation?

And again, I'm not, I mean, again, they actually have talked about that Steve Graham and Jack Thorne that they wanted, they wanted that.

This wasn't about othering, Jamie. Don't put this in the extraordinary. Make this feel like it could happen to you because that is the reality of what is happening in our world it could happen to anybody you know what i mean we thought it'd be interesting to shine a light on the devastation that causes you know the ripple effect that that has on everybody.

It's not that we're finding you know we have solved the matrix puzzle of of adolescence i like it when we're like oh i think this is what they're trying to do and then they might not use these term the exact terms that we are but they kind of go yeah we want to make people go oh this could be us And because what they're not talking about, they're not saying this could be us as in, I could be Eddie. Stephen Graham is not going to be a 13 year old kid, right? When he's saying this could be anyone, he's talking about having someone commit violence within your family. And how do you deal with that? And then it may seemingly come out of nowhere, right? Absolutely feels like a very clear intentionality. Like, I think this is a show where they had a very clear idea of what they wanted to do, right? And had the expertise. I mean, Jack Thorne is an incredible writer on his own. Stephen Graham, you know, Philip is the director. Like, that whole team came in and were able to thread the needle to find a way of telling the story to explore the kind of questions that they wanted to explore. And we're only looking at it on the macro level. I do think it's worth going into some of the micro stuff we haven't kind of dived into before we wrap up. I do want to say in terms of the melodrama thing, I'm just going to give the speech that I didn't give at the beginning. The way I think about genre, and we talked about this on two episodes about genre, but I'm interested in the emotional contract, what I call the emotional contract between a show and a film, because I think for me as a writer thinking about genre isn't from a high school English or a taxonomical kind of point of view. It's that there is a relationship between an audience and a text, and there's a reason they watch the thing. Why do they pick that thing? It's because they want to think and feel in a particular way, right? And then over time, writers have evolved ways, levers that they can use to kind of do the thinking and the feeling in that particular way, right? That's kind of what we were exploring. And for me, melodrama is about big emotion. I watch melodrama because I want to feel big emotion. That may come out of the exaggerated kind of performances or it might come out of heightened performances, right? I do think there is an element of melodrama in Mike Lee's work, right? As realistic and realism to me as a style, you know, the reason that we can't understand what people are saying on TV at the moment is the consequences of realism being the push in a lot of similar and night scenes that no one can see is because people are pushing for realism and authenticity, right?

But Ken Loach's stuff is melodrama without being quote unquote melodramatic.

Exactly, right? And, and to me, there's two sides of the, the, that kind of social realism versus melodrama. They're kind of two sides of the same coin. They're all about big emotion, uh, and exploring. And one of the tools they use to create that emotion is someone that's ordinary. It's not comedy, but it is about a character that doesn't have the skills to solve the plot problem. Right. Which is they, you know, Eddie and Mander are not going to be able to get their sons out of prison. You know, they're, they're not Helen Mirren in, you know, the Fast and the Furious films trying to rescue Jason Stratham, you know, or that's a weird pull, but you know, like that's.

They're not going to be able to undo what Jamie has done.

Yeah.

I think is almost more their powerlessness.

Jamie can't undo what he's done.

Yeah.

Right. As much as, I'm going to use your word, as much as Jamie is kind of the shark in this film, right.

I haven't used that in this episode, but we talked about it off mic.

I know. And it's a really great pull because ultimately we don't actually spend much time in Jamie's point of view. You know, part of the way we ask why about Jamie is by not giving us that much access to Jamie, right? So we can kind of project ideas onto him, project, it actually tries to not give us, it's a great performance that we don't have much access to, right? And in the third episode, he kind of does feel a little bit like a teenager playing evil, but I think it kind of works because you're like, maybe he's just trying to, he's a teenager deliberately trying to play evil, like he's being performative for the psychologist. So I think it kind of works.

I mean, there were a couple of shifts in there that felt a bit- performatively evil but i still bought it because it felt like he was being so careful in that with her and he was trying to push her.

Boundaries oh the the boo when he's standing over her and it was really tense and he boos and like that feels really authentic to how teenagers try to show power to teachers where they know they don't really have power but they kind of want to really push that bound, like right up to that line of what they can get away with. So that's part of the reason I was interested in this in melodrama is because this is a show I don't think at the beginning, like I knew it was going to be a tough watch, but not necessarily in the big emotion, tough watch. And it took us four episodes to get there. So it's harrowing from the beginning and even, you know, episode three is really kind of like intense right but it has to do a lot of work to get us to this four episode with all that like that emotional catharsis right.

Yeah anyway.

Should we go into the micro is there anything you feel specifically you want to talk about or should we just.

Free flow so i mean we can free flow i mean really and and i think i'm hoping that i will in this discussion answer julian's questions uh but i think the i'm coming back to what i said at the beginning they've chosen to have this unity in time because it creates urgency and it creates immediacy and and thus tension while when there's not actually a lot happening right like that's not a fair description but like if you look at the the first episode it really is just it's quite mundane deliberately mundane like obviously there's a raid at the beginning and that's not mundane but then you've got a car ride taking of some bureaucratic notes and being offered cornflakes a talk with a nurse search like it's treated as banal deliberately so what am i trying to get to here so julian asks. How do they stop the camera being a protagonist? Well, I think that's because the intention of the one-er, and you had this comment in when we did our one-er episode, you were talking about the writers in those sequences are not talking about the fact that it's a camera because they don't want the reader to be drawn directly. Have their attention drawn to the camera, to the filmmaking. And I think as much as this is a show where every man and his dog is talking about how each episode is a one, and when you're watching it. Even, I think you probably more than me, but there was only a few moments where I felt the camera work was drawing attention to itself rather than serving the intentionality of raising these character questions, raising this urgency, raising this immediacy. So, you talked about the drone shot in the second episode. That's one where they very deliberately drew attention to the camera work.

Oh, and the shot going through the window when Ryan escapes. Because they're, you know, because they talked about as much, the DP has talked about how they've wanted the camera to be, it doesn't go anywhere without a character. Like, it has to go somewhere with the character. And those two moments that we've pointed out are moments where there's not a character leading the action, right?

I'd written in this chase sequence, and this chase sequence took Bascom and this boy beside the murder site, and then the camera was going to travel back on its own back to the school. That moment would have felt almost like a video game walking down the street. I think it would just take the audience away from what the piece is. And then Phil called me up and he said, Matt and I think we found a way to make the camera fly.

The drone particularly has this feeling, almost like a thematic feeling, and it's got the kids singing because it picks up and gives us a God's eye view. It's very clearly not a point of view, and they decided to do that to then kind of break us and find Eddie. So it gives us a moment of introspection. And I think the moment of like, oh, the camera's flying now is actually like, and then it actually sits in it and you go- Why is it flying?

Where are we going? Like it's wanting us, there's intention to it.

Exactly.

It wants us as the audience to feel that way.

If the camera could float away by itself, then it couldn't possibly be attached to a person. It kind of feels more ethereal. So you've got Baskin finding his own sort of resolution and you're with this character, Jade, whose heart is pulled out. And you're with all these kids as they pull out their phones and then the camera takes off and the camera comes to rest at the murder site it was an example of the technical meeting the story and finding a fusion which is actually better than anything that the story had come up with on its own.

The the camera through the window feels a little bit more like just a pacing choice that that kind of seeing ryan run off finding the detective and then following the detective was just going to be too complex and possibly not going to have the adrenaline that they're looking for but there's like it also feels like it's out of a like the great shot from i think it's the second born where the born jump cameraman.

Jumps through the.

Behind born right it's got a bit of that feeling yeah that it's kind of like oh we're with the detective um you know we're just kind of leading him at this point rather than following him.

And they got incredible coverage right like there's some of those great like, We were talking about it before, Mike, you talked about it like Steven Spielberg coverage, like that scene between Eddie, Amanda in that fourth episode where they're talking about their responsibility. It shifts almost effortlessly from two shots to like close ups with foreground and background action and back again. And it's so well blocked and so well performed. But there is coverage, you know, they're very deliberate in the interrogation scene with Bryony. as to whom they're on. Like, we're actually on Jamie for a lot more than we're on Brian.

I mean, we're now getting into a little bit of a review, but for me, the third episode had the least motivated camera work. Like, where it was just doing the orbiting and it felt a little bit contrived because Jamie will give a speech and then the camera will slowly creep over to find Brian. He finished his speech just in time for her to deliver her dialogue. And I'm like, hmm, I wonder if they had to ADR that speech to get the timing right. Or does the operator just know the timing perfectly to get the rhythm of it? Because it just felt so artificial to me, right? I absolutely know it's my aesthetic sensitivity. I've worked in, you know, I've been editing stuff since the 90s, since I was a teenager. So, that kind of stuff just feels constructed to me in a way that if this wasn't actually a documentary, you'd be struggling to find that stuff. Right? Uh, or you'd be like doing the, anyway.

But my broad point is that they're wanting to use the, the constraint or dare I say gimmick of one shot. Right. And, and we've read articles about the amount of investment and technological work and VFX that they've had to do to pull off that one. Uh, but they've done it to create the urgency and immediacy, but they are still focused. Their intention is still about character questions. It's not about, you know, we looked at the adventures of Tintin. In that sequence, the one was not about us understanding the internality of Tintin, Haddock, and Snowy. It was about the spectacle. It was drawing- Yeah.

Almost the Rube Goldberg machine, like the clockwork precision of this chase and how cause and effect kind of stumbles together, right? And this feels like part of the character questions is served by the fact that the characters can't escape. By playing out in real time with a shot that does not cut, the characters have got nowhere to go. So it is pushing character, right?

Except when the writers want them to go there.

Yeah.

Like, let them off the hook, which is the French scenes aspect of it.

Yeah, I will give you the definition of French scenes in a moment. But I do want to say that my personal definition of a scene, which I think we talked about in the one episode, is that for me, a scene generally kind of has unity of time, unity of place, and unity of action. That's what I'm kind of was defining. And you could add unity of time to that. And it's kind of interesting that one is start to make stories feel like they give a cohesion to it. They disunify it by playing it all in one shot in real time. Right.

Now, in terms of the micro, how do they cope with this unity of time? By the nature of their narrative choices, they've had more challenges in pacing in episodes one and two where you have multiple storylines and multiple groups of characters than you do in episodes three and four. Episode three largely all happens in one room with two characters. Episode four, there is a lot more. There's the three characters of the family. They get leave the house drive the van to the hardware store they buy the paint they have the physical eddie has the physical altercation with the kids that he thinks has have graffitied his van they drive back they have the call and then they're back in the home again but even on all of that there isn't the same shifts of point of view and i'd like to just draw in episode one i think i'm going to be talking about most of my observations because it's like you've chosen this constraint you're wanting to do something in real time and the project i'm doing i'm not going to shoot it as a one or it's not going to be written as a one there's going to be lots of editing uh but it is supposed to be happening in real time as it were so i'm looking at this and going all right what tools that they used here that i can i can steal or make use of and i think in episode one they have lots of point of view shifts where they shift from the perspective character but there's not actually when i think about it there's not actually a ton of narrative point of view shifts in real and what i'm you know drawing the distinction of what does. The audience know in relation to the character that they're following right and in episode one the detectives know more than every other character in the show and more than the audience so we're always behind the detectives we only catch up with them right at the end when we have that big emotional event but every other character be it, Jamie, Jamie's family, the lawyer, the social worker, the administrative police person, the nurse, they all know just as much as Jamie. They're meeting Jamie for the first time, right? They don't really know what he's done. There's some talk about murder, but they don't know the details of the case. And so there's not actually that many shifts in narrative point of view in episode one, which surprises me when I think back to it. There are lots of shifts of point of view. So, what do they do? They're really selective in- they know when they've got travel time between locations and they've filled that travel time either with scenes. So, the drive, they've got that great scene from the drive from the arrest of Jamie to the police station where it's like almost a- Yeah. It's the reading of Jamie's rights and explaining to him what's going to happen. So they either and and often you know they some of these scenes i feel like are only there to maintain pacing so that because they don't want to just sit with an actor or a character moving along a corridor from one location to the next so they're doing these these french scenes and i think one of the most remarkable things that they did with the writing of that episode one is they have introduced almost every single character before we meet them so that we very rarely spend time when we're meeting a new character when we've shifted point of view, sitting in trying to ask those questions of who is this what do they want what are they trying to do yeah and what do i mean by that so jamie is told by the police officer what to what will happen when he reaches the police station he's told by the police officer recommended to ask for a lawyer Jamie is asked if he wants a lawyer. And then the lawyer appears. We know who he is and what his role is. There is an entire conversation about how the procedure that they have to go through before, They can interview Jamie, involves him having a health check and then separately a strip search. And they say there's a scene where the two cops are talking about, we need this to happen and this to happen and this to happen. And this person is late.

Yeah, clever.

So that when that person arrives, we know who they are, what their role is, what they're there to do.

And then it just means it presents that person in character. So, they just come in slightly shitty about the fact that this has all happened so early.

So, it's remarkable writing because what they are in such good control of is what questions they want the audience asking at any given point in time. And when they want to have the pace slowed down, when they want the audience to dwell a little more in character questions, they just don't have to move location or they stay with someone. Like, I've got a particular memory of D.I. Bascom eating an apple as he's walking along a corridor. I think they just took a moment where he could, like, breathe and let out the adrenaline of what he's just gone through before he's preparing for the next thing.

And this is just a broader observation, which is, I think, the show is really good at filling space with all these characters.

Right?

It wouldn't surprise me, though, in terms of how the show was made, they had one week rehearsal, one week tech rehearsal, and then they had one week to shoot it doing two takes a day. Three of the four episodes where they used the take from the last day. So, effectively, they had four days of rehearsal. Really just where it's like the stakes are high. Except the first episode, which was from day one, which is interesting.

Oh, wow. So, they used the take from day one of the shooting. Wow.

Episode one. That's not what they shot first. They shot episode three first, which kind of made- makes sense that they wanted to get the head around the logistics of this all. Anyway.

Yeah. But that's fascinating to me because it's like the most technical one.

Yeah. But I wonder if that's- maybe they shot it last because it is possibly- yeah, it's interesting. Is it the most technical or is the second- I mean.

Episode two is probably pretty technical and you've got even more. The teenage extras.

But they actually talked about how they had ADs in plain clothes acting as teachers. I mean, maybe that's why they're so heightened. They're just being ADs. You know, having been yelled at by an AD before. So, I think, so it wouldn't surprise me. So, it wouldn't surprise me that they rehearsed the first episodes based off the script, but had to give everyone action before they worked out where they're putting the camera. Right. So, that, this is just a guess, but it feels like when they're pointing the camera at person A, person B is only seen in the background, but they've got a full life. Right. And particularly, you can feel it really in the school environment. These kids are having conversations and stuff like that. And sometimes when you're directing extras, it's just, they're just talking nonsense. Right. Or are kind of doing loops. That's something that you can kind of do with extras. They kind of get these little loops of action. they can do but because i think of the way this is made they probably actually had to give all the characters dialogue and like actually objectives within the scene right and then they kind of could so then they could put the camera wherever they wanted and then they didn't pull that stuff out maybe you know i you know they probably had when you finished in this scene you probably had to go and get changed and go to the other location or whatever but it just does feel that a lot of these characters had very clear kind of paths, like almost like a theme park or immersive theater. Having gone to some immersive theater, this reminded me of that in a way, except the decision of who to follow. Like there was a play called The Wolf Play. It's kind of like a choose your own adventure play where you're in a room and you can choose which they believe, Fred scenes, we'll get back to that. And they will leave and you can choose which path to follow. And then Cameron was making that decision for you. Now, who knows whether the writers had an appendix with like, here's dialogue we've written for the kids or, you know, whether that was just something that they kind of improvised together. But to me, it still feels like story and writing that they have gone to that level of detail. And that comes to kind of Julian's sound design point, right, that I think they probably did write this dialogue. It wasn't just offscreen mumble dialogue. It's like, let's write stuff that makes sense because we may hear it. You know, it's got a little bit of that kind of Nashville style, Altman, you know, because Altman wouldn't tell people who he was shooting. That was one of the key, key parts of his styles. He shot everything on zoom long lenses and would get them to act. And he wouldn't tell which, whose courage, he wouldn't tell the actors whose coverage he was shooting because he wanted them all to be in the scene. And this reminded me of that. Which comes to French scenes. So this was a term I picked up from Will Dunn. He's got two excellent books that friended the podcast. Frenchie. These Frenchie, they're not Frenchie scenes, but Frenchie gets credit for the French scenes. The Will Dunn books, I'll put links in the show notes, excellent exercise-driven books. They were all just exercises for writers. And so he's got an exercise on French scenes. And I'm going to read the whole thing. Named after a 17th century french system for identifying scenes in a dramatic script a french scene is a unit of dramatic action demarcated by the entrance or exit of a character each time someone comes or goes a new combination of characters form and a new french scene begins right if there are a number of such comings and going one scene can be made up of several french scenes um french scenes affect the tempo of dramatic action which may feel fast-paced if they are abundant and slow-paced if they're not. French scenes also reveal key information about relationships, since they enable us to see how mood and behavior change as characters come or go. When a new character arrives after a scene has begun, a friendly gathering may turn hostile, and when a character departs before the scene ends, professional meeting may suddenly turn romantic. And you can see how that works here. So even the episode three, when Bryony leaves. Jamie's presence after the fight and she has that moment at the coffee machine her she lets her guard down and we see how affected she is by it and so that's kind of it's not a french scene because we're not saying with jamie but that's what makes the one kind of interesting right.

Is

It's got this combination of we're going to stay in this room.

And have.

A character come in and a character leave but also we're going to follow a character like a relay and see where they go and.

Experience the environment differently yeah i mean there were some of those relays in the first episode where particularly once they get to the police station that really were one character walks like across screen and the camera turns away and we are now following a new character but they've done so much excellent work in introducing us to who that character is or what their role is and what their objective is that we're not lost when we're in that movement and they've got several uh establishing of the geography scenes early on in the police station as they're walking Jamie in, you know, which rooms are locked, which ones are not, where they are in relation to the desk, where the detectives are, where the family waiting room is on the other side of that locked door. So they've done all this work so that... We are, yes, they're French scenes, arguably. Some of them-

The big French scene example would be the interview at the very end, where it is the lawyer, Jamie, Eddie, and the two detectives. They reveal the footage, and then everyone leads except Eddie and Jamie, and they have a moment together, and that's when you get the emotional event, because that vulnerability and intimacy between them wouldn't happen with the others in the room. Yeah. The kind of handover stuff. Is it a French scene? Is it not? No, but it's an interesting way of thinking about how to construct scenes.

Well, I think it gives the pace to it because they're all in this physical location of the police station. They're not all necessarily in the same room. So, you are moving from location to location in combination of characters. But the fact that you are suddenly following a character that you know who has an objective, you know, it feels like a French scene. And it increases that pacing and it feels effortless that we are, while maintaining the immediacy of the one-er, we're suddenly in a new scene with entirely new characters in an entirely new location.

And I think what is great about, I mean, I call them handovers. I think that's where I picked it up doing Steadicam stuff. What's cool about the handover and I think the useful technique for writers on a micro level is you actually are asking who is the point of view character going into this scene. Right. And one of the choices that they're having to make with these one is, is who is the POV character for the scene? Who is the protagonist of the scene is not necessarily the same as the point of view character. Right. And I think, you know, you coming full circle to the, the scene where Jamie is getting strip searched that they have chosen the point of view character to be Eddie. Right. I think there could be an interesting shift where the handover gets us in there with point of view character A, to me character B, but character A leaves. And that's kind of why it's a French scene. That definitely happens in episode three when we see Jamie, there's like a guard walks down to Jamie's room and then we see Jamie and then the guard leaves and we're just with Jamie. And it's just a way to get us to Jamie. But that is kind of like a French scene in a way, I think, in the way that you're kind of talking about, right?

Yeah. Well, what I'm talking about is how have they solved a pacing problem with a oner with moving from one scene to the next if they don't want necessarily a character from the previous scene or all the characters from a previous scene in the next scene. And they've done it through establishing of geography, establishing of characters, and then incredibly well-timed, well-rehearsed handovers.

Yeah, yeah.

But, I mean, one of the most enjoyable Draft Zero episodes we've ever done was actually one we did looking at pilots and talking about the difference between literary and dramatic techniques. And the wanna is a literary, technique right the the characters in the in the show don't know that they're in they're being revealed to an audience in a wanna right but.

I actually think in a way it's a dramatic technique because the character's experience of a scene should be in real time.

Unedited it's it's it's aligning us but they are not this is i think this is you know going back to julian's question both on sound design and on how do they stop the character becoming a protagonist is they haven't relinquished dramatic tools like this is not no feeling like cinema verite where it's trying to be like a documentary it doesn't feel altman-esque right we're very clear on who the camera is supposed to be on when it's all very precise and you felt that more than i did in the in you know sort of aesthetically in coverage reasons but then there are moments you know the drone shot And there's sound design moments where you've talked about they would have been really conscious of making sure that they're capturing a whole lot of real in-world sound design. But I was interested at the moments where they put us into the perspective of one of the characters, particularly Eddie when he was really upset in the hardware store, everything becomes muffled. And it's just putting us in his it's it's it's they're still using dramatic techniques over narrative ones they're not forgetting ever that this is a show i mean the the only point in the whole four episodes where i actually got annoyed at the camera work was the opening of episode four where it opens in the shed, and Eddie opens the shed and then the camera seemingly goes through a wall as it leaves with Eddie. And it was drawing my attention to the camera work in a way that I didn't feel was serving the story.

Coming back, because while you've been talking, I haven't been paying attention, I've just been watching the scene. And this is a good example. So it is the midpoint. The strip search is kind of the midpoint. So, we're, and you're seeing with the lawyers, the lawyer and the detectives, right? So, Jamie's lawyer and the two detectives. The detectives leave and they're kind of talking with each other, right? And then a... The officer, the plainclothes officer, which had taken Jamie's, had kind of done the record keeping with Jamie, the admin, right, basically walks past frame, walks to Eddie, and then does a. Escorts Eddie to the room with the nurse, right? And then Jamie comes in. And, yeah, I mean, it just kind of, I just looked at him and went, yeah, my feeling was that they made the decision to have the point of view, and then the guard leaves. So the point of view character of that scene of jamie being strip searched is eddie and they have made that decision and they've worked backwards in terms of how to make that it um i mean it makes sense for an admin that the admin cop goes and gets eddie and walks into where he needs to be but it kind of does the connective tissue and i think it would be an interesting exercise for your scripts like i'm looking at it now going huh i can there's some scenes where i would be interested in writing the connective tissue even if i know we're going to cut it just so I understand who it is that is the point of view character, how are we getting in there? It's kind of like an interesting exercise and it's the kind of like off-script improvisation that you could do, right, as well. Like from a directorial technique, we're coming into this scene, we've actually cut out the connective tissue, right? So there's a version of this where they don't see Eddie being escorted in and they just cut to him being there, But there is something in him being led there, led into the back room that kind of does stuff for his mentality and him being confronted with the room and the nurse and all that kind of stuff that you could kind of work in either improvisationally or just write in order to cut.

Are we at the end? Have we got any other micro techniques you want to draw out?

In the absence of.

Us- In the absence of us actually having the scripts.

The POV question of the scene, like who is the point of view character of the scene, actually helps inform the dramatic question of the scenes, right? And in this case, they're very clear because it is what is the impact of these. Like, if an underlining or running question of this show is what is the impact of these events and these people, then having Eddie being the one that watches Jamie makes sense, right? Because this scene is about what is the impact of this scene on the character. And I actually think you can ask yourself that question of every scene, what character is most impacted by the events of this scene, right? And then that becomes your point of view character.

Right?

And then, you know, there is a version of that where, well, what if we just hang on their face? Right? But I think that is a really interesting reverse way of thinking about it, using a tool for melodrama. You know, I'm just thinking about it in terms of our work and going, you know, what is the impact of this event on this character? Right?

I think back to most recent script and there was a character beat that repeatedly, we understood it, but a lot of people reading the work were like, I just can't quite get across with this character beat, a decision that they make or a response that they make to a very heightened situation. And what we ended up the the solve actually was to spend time with the character sitting emotionally in their experience.

Potentially as a wanna yeah i think we kind of came up with it after doing our own episode right where we're like oh what if this is the uh what if this is the solve literally spend real time with them and play around with the audio and and all that kind of stuff um yeah i mean because that is a scene about the impact of that event on that character well.

I mean i would say that's not what the scene is about but we had to answer that question so that people would go along with.

You know what.

What happens next.

Yeah we.

Ended up using a character question to resolve a plot issue.

I guess we're already kind of now into learnings i think the The incomplete thing is definitely a really good learning that kind of restricting your point of view does mean that it can leave some things incomplete. And the success of this show has shown you, has shown that, you know, not everything needs an answer. And in fact, if you want people to talk about it, maybe it being, there being space for questions from the audience is really useful. But I do think an aspect of the incompleteness is that there are these characters that you meet, for one episode that you feel like you go on a journey with. So I feel like you're getting, you're kind of seeing a little bit of Jade's life.

Right?

She's a character which has given, you know, kind of become- we come back to her, right? So we see her in being interviewed by the cops, she leaves, but then we come back with her, learn about her relationship with the victim, um, Katie, and- and then we kind of leave with her at the end, right? Which I think is a powerful choice that they come back to her and make her part of the wrap-up of the story in the way that when the detective and Adam connect, we see her kind of being visibly ostracized and affected, and we just leave her there.

Yeah.

But same with Bryony, right? Like, we never come back to that character.

Yeah.

Right? And it's kind of like, it is incomplete. I like that word.

Mm-hmm.

Allowing things to be incomplete, because it's not saying it's, hmm, unresolved is not the right word. It's like you've built some of the road there, but you don't have to kind of come to a conclusion.

Yeah, I think it's coming back to me to the power of what questions like it's clear. What makes this so successful on a writing level for me is hopefully this episode has made it clear that the writers on a macro and a micro level are so in control of the questions they want their audience to be asking at any given time. Do they want them to be asking plot questions? Do they want them to be asking character questions? Do they want them to be asking thematic questions? And they've put in the massive amounts of work such that the stuff that feels... I don't actually think the 101, it's powerful and it's pulled off really well. I don't think that's the marvel of this show. I think it's a tool that is in service of what is incredibly... Well executed in this show which is how it's pulled off unity in time and and what it's what that has allowed them to do in relation to characters but i'm gonna i think forever be using this as well episode one of this is a crime police procedural where actually none of the characters are trying to figure out who done it.

What are you gonna be using that for you're gonna be constantly.

I don't know just just when people start talking about like oh why are people not more active what are they trying to do and like you know it's more about i.

Mean i mean we just mentioned it the many times because it's obviously a very powerful same scene eddie watching his son.

Being strapped.

To it eddie what can eddie do what is the plot of that scene i mean i guess are they going to find.

Evidence is the plot question.

Right but it's not told from the.

Detective's point.

Of view it is not told from jamie's.

Point of.

View the two people that are actually immediately affected.

By the.

You know, who asked the question and plot and then it's actually played on, on, on Eddie. Right. So I think it, it kind of hopefully empowers people to do kind of a storytelling that isn't, uh, and I love plot driven stuff, but.

Yeah.

You know, I loved Jack Reacher season three, smashed it like fucking three episodes a night up way too late, got through it, but I'm not talking about it in the same, I'm not like, We got to do an episode. Right. And, and as much as I love the writing in that, it ain't, it ain't doing what this is doing.

So I, I think, I think this just gives me a language and an example to talk about. How you can be in an almost plot absent scene and even episode, but have it feel tense. The absence of plot does not mean the absence of tension.

That's something we should explore further. Because we've talked about tension being point of view. So point of view driven, and this is tension that is, I mean, it's about from restricted point of view.

But they're not shifting narrative point of view a lot.

No. And in fact, they're doing the very melodramatic thing of staying very inside a very tight point of view. Yes. My last observation is I, you know, the kind of, when I realized that every episode had an emotional event, I went, we looked at that at a scene level, right? But, you know, it's kind of interesting to think about it on a macro level. Emotional event of an episode, emotional event of an act or a sequence and of the whole show, right? I think is something we, it's probably actually worth coming back to in the same way that we took sequence questions and then looked at them on a scene level. Right. It's kind of might be interesting to do emotional events the other way and kind of look at large, using emotional events as a larger structuring tool.

I mean, I would love to dig in more to emotional events. That was a really eye-opening and great episode.

Cool.

But yeah.

I'm back.

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