Chas: The absence of plot does not mean the absence of tension.
Chas: Hi, I'm Chas Fisher.
Stu: And I'm Stu Willis.
Chas: And welcome to Draft Zero, a podcast where two emerging filmmakers try to work
Chas: out what makes great screenplays work.
Stu: And in this episode, we are going to be talking about the four-part Netflix
Stu: series, Adolescence. In a way, this is a one-shot or a one-a-shot,
Stu: as my joke is, but it's about all four episodes, so four-shot? I don't know.
Stu: And the reason I wanted to do this, and it's obviously a series that's sparked
Stu: a lot of conversation, right?
Stu: And I'm interested in the craft tools that the show has used to,
Stu: one, be so compelling to watch, but two, turn that compulsive watching into
Stu: conversation. Does that make sense?
Chas: Absolutely. I would just warn everyone that we very much wanted to read scripts,
Chas: but they're still not yet available.
Chas: I'm sure they will be at least some available come awards season.
Chas: So we're less looking about on the page tools.
Chas: And while I think we'll obviously talk about the fact that they're all shot
Chas: is in one take, like each individual episode is one continuous shot.
Chas: While we'll talk about that, I think what we're going to really discuss is what is the effect of that?
Chas: What is the intention of that? What are the constraints that it put on the writing,
Chas: on the writers, and what tools, in particular I'm looking at,
Chas: what tools did they bring to make that really work?
Chas: So, I think we're sort of related in what our intention is here.
Chas: I'm going to be somewhat selfish and say that I am writing a script that is
Chas: sort of a contained chamber piece about a leadership meeting and hubris and
Chas: faith and all those kind of things.
Chas: So for me, I really wanted to come into this going less, how do I write this
Chas: as if it's in one shot and more, how do I harness the power that they have found?
Chas: Coming from it being in real time?
Stu: Look, when I first mentioned this to you, because I watched the first episode,
Stu: it was like, I think we should do adolescence.
Stu: It wasn't really about the one-up, right? Every episode is shot as one shot
Stu: for those who haven't seen it.
Stu: But hopefully if you listen to this, you've seen it.
Stu: It was because that decision meant they had to use craft tools like French scenes
Stu: and the mastery of POV and other things that we're going to talk about to kind of make it work.
Stu: So, I think when I actually first watched it, it was less about why is this a conversation?
Stu: It was more like, ooh, you know, we could use this to talk about narrative point
Stu: of view and the point of view character per scene, you know,
Stu: who is the character, the protagonist of the scene and French scenes,
Stu: and I would have been happy.
Stu: And then when I got to the end, I'm like, ah, there's actually this bigger question
Stu: about like the show and how those narrative techniques have made it such a conversation piece.
Stu: And so I think this episode is going to be really divided into two ha's,
Stu: us talking about the kind of the macro, talking about the structure of the four
Stu: episodes, how they work together and how I think, how we think they kind of
Stu: lead us to this point at the end of the show that we kind of want to talk about it.
Stu: And then I think we're going to deep dive into those tools.
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: Right.
Chas: And before we do, we put out a call to our amazing patrons to see if they had
Chas: anything that they wanted us to cover.
Chas: Our patrons as always bring you more draft zero more
Chas: often and we got questions from julian
Chas: one of which was how do they stop the camera becoming a protagonist and obviously
Chas: i think some of that will drift into directorial commentary but i do think there's
Chas: uh storytelling like narrative tools that they've applied as well julian also
Chas: welcomed any comments we might have on sound design.
Chas: And then Sandra, I'm not going to read out all of Sandra's comments. Yeah.
Chas: Amazing and beautiful comments. Thank you, Sandra. But I just wanted to highlight
Chas: certain things. And this is me editorializing or rather excerpting to suit my
Chas: own narrative purposes.
Chas: But she said the real time made it feel more
Chas: authentic and captured a range of people caught
Chas: up in the events and drawn into the
Chas: mayhem feeling fenced in overwhelmed and all of that created a visceral reality
Chas: and the reason why i've highlighted all those words is that i think this is
Chas: quite clearly a melodrama uh i was up until.
Stu: Emma and i watched this over two nights and we were up on the on the sunday
Stu: night after we watched it we were up to 3 a.m arguing about whether or not it
Stu: was a melodrama i mean I mean.
Chas: Is Emma available to come in and put her points across, or are you going to paraphrase?
Stu: I mean, she's wrong, so I'm not going to...
Stu: I'm not going to give you the airtime. Look, no, I'm being somewhat facetious about that.
Stu: And I think it's because, one, we had done a really long episode,
Stu: a three-hour episode, with Stephen Cleary on melodrama and passive protagonists.
Stu: And that has colored our ways of thinking about melodrama.
Stu: But we've also subsequently done other episodes on drama.
Chas: Yeah, sure.
Stu: But I think we'll save that discussion about melodrama until after we've kind of introduced the film.
Chas: Okay.
Stu: But I think it's worth you breaking down the key learnings of that melodrama
Stu: episode. And we also did an episode, which I haven't re-listened to yet, on Oners.
Chas: Yeah. So, I mean, broadly, and feel free to chip in here, Stu,
Chas: we were being guided by Stephen Cleary's definitions of what constituted a melodrama.
Chas: And I think it's really helpful because it was trying to remove the pejorative
Chas: nature to it, the stigma around it.
Chas: And you used the word passive protagonist and Stephen in that episode corrected
Chas: us and said, rather than passive, which has become a loaded term, he preferred still.
Chas: And what I love about this in the context of adolescence is all the things I'm
Chas: about to list, I think are clearly dramatized or utilized in adolescence.
Chas: So, a melodrama story in contrast
Chas: to the hero's journey story is about
Chas: ordinary people going through massive life-changing events in the face of which
Chas: they are either powerless or there is a massive cost to taking action and equally
Chas: a massive cost to endurance.
Chas: And so because these melodramatic stories are less inherently plotted and more focused on.
Chas: The endurance or the cost of taking action, they become inherently more character-driven.
Chas: And then in relation to one as we looked at single one-er sequences rather than
Chas: whole stories in Goodfellas, Tintin, and Children of Men.
Chas: And while I'm going to be fascinated to get my hand on the adolescent scripts,
Chas: and maybe we'll do a back matter when they're finally out,
Chas: none of those three scripts really drew attention to
Chas: the fact that they were going to be shot as
Chas: one-ers and instead we focused on
Chas: how the writers were giving the intentionality and feeling on the page of shooting
Chas: as a one-er and we discussed the words that came up repeatedly were immediacy
Chas: and urgency one thing that we didn't discuss but i think stems from that is
Chas: stakes when something's being shot in real time,
Chas: I think you feel like narratively you can't escape.
Chas: There won't be a cut to three weeks later. There's a kind of sense of terror
Chas: that comes with watching something in real time.
Chas: And I've said real time a few times, but you made the observation in that one
Chas: episode that it's about unity in time of plot, character, camera,
Chas: all these things coming together and happening at once.
Chas: And to me, that's what I hope we actually dive into when we're looking at the
Chas: macro stuff and the micro tools is they've made a decision to have unity and
Chas: time in their narrative.
Chas: And that comes with benefits, obviously, because we're all talking about it.
Chas: And most of us found it to be extremely powerful experience.
Chas: I'm talking about adolescence here. But then with that comes constraints that
Chas: I think adolescence just seems to be so well executed that it shrugs off those constraints.
Stu: And maybe the answer is, you know, to the question of, you know,
Stu: why is this film so watched and why are people talking about it is just because
Stu: it's really, really, really, really, really, really exceptionally good.
Stu: And, but I can't, you know, I mean, this is just really how my brain works.
Stu: Looking at something and going, that is exceptionally good, to me doesn't help
Stu: me as an artist. In the same way that I've got friends that are like shrug off
Stu: and go, I don't think you can learn these things.
Stu: Right? You're kind of born with it. And I'm like, well, that's a really useful
Stu: thing because I don't know whether I'm born with it or not.
Stu: All I can do is keep on applying myself.
Stu: Right. But we should kind of summarize what adolescence is about and just to remind people.
Excerpts: That's the least. What are you looking for?
Excerpts: You're making a big mistake. He's only a kid. Dad, I haven't done anything.
Excerpts: He's a good kid. Jamie, I want you to listen carefully.
Excerpts: What's going on? I'm going to start off with asking you. Do you know a girl called Katie Leonard?
Excerpts: Yeah. Describe each other as friends then.
Excerpts: Is she dead then? Why would you ask her?
Excerpts: So do you think it would be okay if we speak about it? I haven't done anything.
Excerpts: You're a good dad a great dad he hasn't been found guilty he's been accused.
Chas: How would you like to tackle it? Should we just summarize what the four episodes are?
Chas: Or do we want to go one episode at a time and talk about genre and central dramatic questions?
Stu: I think we kind of summarize the whole- I mean, I'm just going to read the Wikipedia
Stu: summary. And then we can kind of talk about the four episodes.
Chas: All right.
Stu: So, Adolescence is a show about a 13-year-old schoolboy who's accused of murder.
Stu: Now, that is something that you kind of catch up to in the first episode.
Stu: So it is one of those shows that
Stu: I do think rewards the less that you know about it going in, the better.
Stu: Because part of the structure of the first episode is leading us to that point about the accusation.
Stu: That said, the first episode is very compelling, even if you know he's about
Stu: to be accused, because it's almost the inciting incident of the first episode.
Chas: I watched it with Anna, and I had read enough about it that I knew what the
Chas: outcome of the accusation was, and Anna didn't. And so Anna was surprised by
Chas: the reveal at the end, whereas I was not surprised, but did not find it any less affecting.
Stu: I was surprised by the reveal and we'll get to that.
Stu: But this is me riffing on the Wikipedia summary, which is obviously a crown
Stu: source kind of summary, which is like in an English town, armed police raid
Stu: a family home and arrest Jamie Miller, 13 year old boy and suspicious of murder of a classmate, Katie.
Stu: Jamie is processed and held at a police station for questioning and then remanded
Stu: in custody to secure training center.
Stu: So, he is held at police station for questioning is the first episode.
Stu: The remanded in custody at Secure Training Center is something we,
Stu: is referred to in the second episode and we don't actually see until the third episode.
Stu: Investigations at Jamie's school and interviews by a forensic psychologist undercovers
Stu: Jamie's view towards women.
Stu: That's interesting because this is skipping over the episode that is completely
Stu: focused on Jamie's school, which is episode two. So it's the detectives going
Stu: to the school to find the murder weapon to make their case against Jamie stronger.
Stu: The third episode is the interview of the forensic psychologist.
Stu: And then the fourth episode is, as Wikipedia explains, at home,
Stu: Jamie's family deals with the community backlash against them as they work together
Stu: to cope with Jamie's arrest and subsequent detention.
Stu: So this is a show that does a couple of, it's got some tension in it, right?
Stu: In just in the concept. So it's a show which every episode is more or less an
Stu: hour of real time, one shot, but every episode jumps time quite substantially.
Stu: So, it actually, the whole show takes over 13 months.
Stu: So, it's not a show where it's four hours in real time.
Stu: It's one hour, jump to the next day, jump to, I think it's a couple of weeks
Stu: or quite a bit later, and then it's 13 months later.
Chas: I think it was, from memory, day one, day three, and then I think it's either
Chas: like three or four months later, and then it's- Seven. Seven,
Chas: there you go. And then it's 13 months later.
Stu: Yeah. And so, that's one of the tensions of the show, right?
Stu: And one of the other tensions for me of the show is the one-shot,
Stu: to me, I know it's a very personal thing, feeling contrived, right?
Stu: To me, one-shots, and I think at some point I'm going to do a video essay about
Stu: 1917 being the greatest video game adaptation of all time,
Stu: because the single shot in 1917 means it's got to use kind of narrative aesthetics
Stu: of video games to kind of get its characters through things, right? Right.
Stu: 19, this manages to avoid some of that game stuff. And I actually have talked
Stu: about that in the behind the scenes.
Stu: There's a drone shot where they attach the camera to the drone,
Stu: it flies off at the end of second episode two.
Stu: And that's originally, it was scripted to be a shot that kind of goes back through
Stu: the school, the empty school.
Stu: And they decided against that because it was going to be feel too video gamey.
Stu: And also I think there is that danger of those long single shots in a school
Stu: are going to be reminiscent of Gus Van Zandt's Elephant, which is a film that
Stu: is actually somewhat, to me, a precursor to this, right? In terms of it's a why done it.
Chas: But let's, so, let's.
Chas: Just to be super clear, the 1917 had massive time jumps within it.
Chas: So, it sort of wrestled with- I think he falls asleep or is knocked unconscious
Chas: twice so that time can pass.
Stu: Yeah, video game-y.
Chas: Yeah, like it was really wrestling against its constraints in the way that I
Chas: think by choosing to have- We can tell a story over a long time span,
Chas: but that each individual episode is, you know, 40 or 50 minutes in real time
Chas: gives them some real luxury in that structure.
Stu: And I will say the other tension in it, and the reviewer on Letterboxd put it
Stu: better than I did when I was trying to explain it, is it's a social realism
Stu: melodrama, which for Emma was like, how does that work?
Stu: Right? But I'm going to get to the melodrama thing because I think the melodramatic
Stu: elements don't actually truly emerge until the second episode.
Stu: But I think they're established in the first episode because the show,
Stu: the first episode, opens with the cop getting a message from his son talking
Stu: about his son wanting to skip school.
Excerpts: More than that, um, have that bad stomach thing again.
Excerpts: Time is it? 6am, that commitment. Don't want to go, does he?
Excerpts: Yeah, he knows Tracy will say no, and I'm the soft touch.
Stu: So one of the important aspects of a melodrama, I guess we're going to start
Stu: unpacking that, is which is you mentioned that Stephen talks about that it's ordinary characters.
Stu: It's ordinary characters in extraordinary circumstances.
Stu: That other shows, even detective shows, think of something like Mindhunter.
Stu: He is an exceptionally gifted detective in Mindhunter, right?
Stu: He is the one that is working out how to use forensic psychology to catch criminals, right?
Stu: This isn't interested in these detectives being extraordinarily good.
Stu: They're revealed to be good cops, but they're also revealed to be kind of given
Stu: the case on a platter in a way, right? They get, they have very damning evidence.
Stu: It's not them, you know, being Poiro about it, you know, they're just ordinary
Stu: cops and it's already connecting them to the ordinary lives.
Stu: But the, the structure of the first episode.
Stu: And so I'm interested in the central dramatic questions of the show and how
Stu: they shift over the four episodes.
Stu: Right. I think the first episode is once Jamie is arrested, the question becomes, did he do it?
Stu: That is the standard kind of premise question.
Stu: And there is another show that I really like called In the Night Of,
Stu: which is about a young man being arrested for murder and charged with murder.
Stu: And the whole show is interrogating whether or not he did it.
Stu: Okay. And that's kind of the, it's the mystery that drives you.
Stu: And what's interesting is the adolescent's.
Stu: Answers the question of, did Jamie kill this girl with a very definitive yes
Stu: at the end of the first episode?
Stu: And it shifts the show from being a whodunit to, and in the words of the creator,
Stu: Stephen Graham, into a whydunit.
Stu: And so, it closes that plot question.
Stu: So, the first episode is very compelling to watch. It's a great procedural.
Stu: You know, it's got a lot of those procedural beats with the detail that I really
Stu: like. and then it has the plot question, but then it does something else.
Stu: Once it answers the plot question, it sits in the emotional event of the episode.
Stu: And the emotional event is, you know, I mean, I'm just reminding for people
Stu: that have seen it, and if you haven't seen it, spoilers, but please just go
Stu: and watch it, is obviously Jamie has his dad acting, has his,
Stu: what's the particular term?
Stu: Appropriate adult, right? And then the detectives reveal that they have footage
Stu: of Jamie stabbing this girl, right?
Stu: And then we sit with Jamie and his dad, Eddie, right?
Stu: As Eddie kind of begins to realize that his son actually did this crime.
Stu: So the emotional event is him realizing, right, it kind of pushes them apart at that point.
Stu: I think that's a very clear emotional event and they have made a decision to
Stu: sit in this because the show is going to be about the impact of what Jamie has
Stu: done on the people around him, the ripple effects of that.
Excerpts: I'm terminating this interview at 7.12am. Let's go.
Excerpts: Oh, my God.
Excerpts: I'll give you two a minute.
Excerpts: All right.
Chas: Can I make some observations about episode one?
Stu: Yeah, of course.
Chas: I agree completely that it is, that the central dramatic question is, did Jamie do it?
Chas: And it is by far the most plotted of all four episodes.
Stu: Agreed.
Chas: There is a lot that happens. The point of view shifts repeatedly and very quickly.
Stu: It's thriller kind of narrative point of view shifting, right?
Chas: Yeah, but one of the observations I'd make is that we are very rarely in Jamie's POV in those moments.
Chas: And here's some that stood out for me as particular moments.
Chas: There's one where they're in the car from after Jamie's been arrested and his
Chas: parents are going in a separate car to the police station. So,
Chas: he's alone with a social worker and with the detective in the back of the car.
Chas: And I think that is in Jamie's POV.
Excerpts: I haven't done anything. I haven't. Hey, hey, hey. We'll get into that conversation
Excerpts: when we get to the station, okay?
Excerpts: This is not the place to be speaking about anything like that. All right?
Excerpts: Save all of this for when we get there. And say another word.
Excerpts: I'm going to suggest something. When asked, you ask for a solicitor, okay?
Excerpts: Hey, you can speak to your parents about it when you get to the station.
Excerpts: It won't make you seem more guilty.
Excerpts: Just for your best interests, all right?
Excerpts: Jamie, this is Derek. Derek will be your appropriate adult for the purpose of
Excerpts: this arrest, all right? Hey, Jamie.
Excerpts: I'm from Doncaster Social Services, all right? Once you get there,
Excerpts: the custody sergeant is going to ask you whether you want to keep Derek on or
Excerpts: whether you want someone else, or you can even have one of your parents.
Excerpts: It'll just be for your searches, bloods, any time you're talking to your solicitor,
Excerpts: that sort of thing, okay?
Excerpts: We won't prejudice your case, whatever you decide, mate. All right?
Excerpts: Okay, Jamie.
Chas: But the, when he's being processed in the, um, at the front desk,
Chas: the camera is often behind Jamie pointing at the, and the point of view character
Chas: is pretty much this sort of administrative police person.
Chas: Yeah. Similarly, one of the really grueling scenes is when they,
Chas: the, uh, detects, and Jamie's 13, the police officers have to strip search Jamie
Chas: and take forensic evidence.
Chas: And in that moment, they hold really tightly on his father's face while we know
Chas: what his father is looking at and we hear the detectives,
Chas: the process that they're talking Jamie through and what he's going through.
Chas: But we're not in Jamie's point of view at all.
Chas: We can't even see him in that moment.
Chas: We've got lots of point of view moments with the detectives,
Chas: with the nurse character, with the lawyer coming and going.
Chas: And then once we're in the interrogation, I still think we're almost more in
Chas: the father's point of view.
Chas: I mean, you could say it's fairly even in that, but the emotional event is the
Chas: father's emotional event. at the culmination of that scene.
Chas: So while I agree that it is definitely a procedural in the true sense of the
Chas: word in that there's lots of procedure, but the procedure isn't about finding more clues.
Chas: None of the procedures that we see are about discovering whether Jamie did it or not.
Chas: They know before they've even arrested him. They've seen that footage and they know.
Chas: We don't know as the audience, but what we're watching is the procedure of how
Chas: to arrest a 13 year old boy not the procedure of finding out whether that 13
Chas: year old boy is guilty or not.
Excerpts: You had your breakfast son no okay
Excerpts: i am it's 6 31 authorizing your detention
Excerpts: so that the officers can preserve evidence by questioning you
Excerpts: about the offense you are suspected of you can
Excerpts: be held at this police station for 24 hours your detention
Excerpts: here will be reviewed by an independent inspector on a regular basis so that
Excerpts: you your solicitor or your appropriate adult can make representations about
Excerpts: your detention at that review you understood all that son yeah okay good lad
Excerpts: right let's get you to a cell so.
Stu: It's kind of interesting man and this comes to this tension that you've talked
Stu: about it being a very heavily plotted episode but at the same time you're you're
Stu: saying it's not about it's about the impact of the procedure yeah of
Stu: arresting a 13 year old on everyone in that station yes because there is a detective who even says,
Stu: man, juvenile cases are the worst, right?
Excerpts: I hate juvenile cases, man. No one likes them.
Chas: So this is focusing on the effect that this,
Chas: procedure is having on all the characters.
Chas: On Jamie as well, I'm not saying not, but it's not people trying to figure out
Chas: whether Jamie has done it or not.
Stu: It's us.
Chas: That is the central dramatic question for the audience, but that is what none
Chas: of the characters are trying to do, except the father.
Stu: And the lawyer, right?
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: The lawyer is trying to kind of represent him well, even if he goes,
Stu: oh, they must have some pretty compelling evidence, you know,
Stu: to be moving as quickly as they did.
Chas: But the lawyer's opening line is I'm not going to ask you whether you did it or not.
Stu: Well, I mean, that would be your legal advice, right?
Chas: I don't know. Here in Australia, we're like, as lawyers, it's like,
Chas: we don't want to generally play those games. It's better for us to know everything.
Chas: We can do our job better if we know everything than if our client is lying to us.
Chas: There are some criminal lawyers who very much, you know, if I don't know,
Chas: then I can lead the court wherever I want to lead them, essentially.
Stu: Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I feel like we might need to come back to this because
Stu: it to me is this interesting thing of the first episode is a very classic thriller.
Stu: You're discombulated, you're with the characters, right?
Stu: You're going through this discombulating experience, you're playing catch up.
Stu: So there's a lot of these plot questions about like what has happened,
Stu: what is he accused of, you know, all these kinds of questions,
Stu: which are kind of plot questions, kind of keep us hooked.
Stu: When, as you say, from a kind of the objective of the cops or the super objective,
Stu: and it's interesting in an interview with Stephen Graham, he talked about super objective.
Stu: He very much approaches his writing as an actor.
Stu: They know they've got him, right? So, I guess their question is they're just
Stu: trying to make a good case, right?
Stu: They're trying to get as much evidence so they can get motivation.
Stu: That's what they keep on coming back to about- Because they- they clearly want
Stu: to, you know, and that's going to be about whether this is manslaughter or,
Stu: or, you know, first degree murder, right?
Stu: So that's kind of an interesting tension in this episode.
Chas: So all I'm saying is for a very, very tightly plotted, very genre,
Chas: feels like a police procedural, they have, interestingly, every single one of
Chas: those scenes, none of them is actually about whether Jamie did it or not.
Chas: And the one exception to that is where the father outright asks him before the interview happens.
Excerpts: I'm going to ask you a watch, okay? No matter what happened,
Excerpts: no matter what you've done or you haven't done, from what you used to tell me the truth.
Excerpts: Did you do it?
Excerpts: No.
Excerpts: Promise.
Excerpts: Okay.
Stu: So here's the interesting question for me, because I think the other three episodes are different.
Stu: Who is the protagonist of this episode?
Chas: I genuinely think it shifts. I think, obviously,
Chas: the show opens with the detectives and there's very much scenes where the detectives
Chas: feel like they take the first action in that sense.
Chas: They are driving the plot because Jamie and Eddie are powerless, really.
Chas: Everything just happens to them. They are not in charge of the, the plot.
Chas: Uh, I think that closing scene, I do think it's about Eddie is the main character.
Chas: Cause what we revealed at the end is that Jamie, Jamie knows what he's done.
Chas: What Jamie doesn't know is that there's footage.
Stu: Yes.
Chas: Jamie doesn't know what they know, what they have on him.
Stu: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true. They're playing kind of- He's playing catch-up.
Stu: I think you're probably right that Eddie's the protagonist, but it's an interesting question.
Stu: It's very- What I would use the phrase micro-plotted episode.
Stu: And what's interesting about jumping to the Force episode is that is actually
Stu: a hero, kind of a hero's journey or a Harmon story wheel in its structure.
Stu: Structure even though it feels the most character driven and it's actually got
Stu: the most conventional kind of structure to it
Stu: yeah and what's interesting about the second episode and i think we should get
Stu: into that is the first episode is driven by an audience
Stu: asking did jamie do it and the closest character i guess what it is is the closest
Stu: character that he's aligned to the question the audience is asking is eddie
Stu: so maybe that's why he feels like the protagonist of the first episode because
Stu: did jamie do it it's kind of a quick i think he believes him but also So he
Stu: kind of wants to know, I never,
Stu: we're going to pause here and I'm
Stu: going to say part of the reason that adolescence, I think appealed to me.
Stu: And this is why I'm relating to the dad.
Stu: Both my parents are high school teachers. A student, my mom taught a really rough school.
Stu: One of the students left their school and stabbed another student to death on the dance floor.
Stu: And this was in the nineties. And my mom was like, oh yeah, we could always
Stu: just tell that kid was fucked up. And it's just, you know, a shame that no one
Stu: could help him in a way that before he hurt someone.
Stu: I was also in high school in the 90s, and I was the student representative on
Stu: the school council, not the student's representative council,
Stu: the school council, the governing body of the school.
Stu: And there was an incident at the school. I'm sure I could talk about it now.
Stu: It's been like 20 years where a student in what we would call hope economics,
Stu: home economics, cooking, uh, a girl backed into his knife, uh, is what he claimed.
Stu: And, but there was a history and the, and the boy was suspended and they kind of did investigation.
Stu: And there was a history of this boy kind of targeting this girl.
Stu: Uh, and the long story short of it is that she changed schools and he came back
Stu: to school because his parents were just.
Stu: Adamant that there's no way he could possibly have done anything wrong and they
Stu: fought the school every step of the way.
Stu: And I think they may even try to take the principal to court,
Stu: but that was like after I had left.
Stu: Right. And so there's definitely this sense of, I don't think Eddie is the parent
Stu: that is like, I am just going to defend my child no matter what.
Stu: He feels conflicted about it, which comes back in episode four, I think.
Chas: But it would have been a very different but interesting variation on the show
Chas: if they were exploring the trial without having slam dunk evidence.
Stu: It would be a, yes, but it wouldn't be the show that has the conversation that
Stu: this has started. I mean- For sure. Yeah.
Stu: The Night Of is a older character. I think he's- Played by Riz Ahmed.
Chas: Looks to be in about his 30s, maybe early 20s, late 20s, sorry.
Stu: Yeah. And it's dealing with facts that he's kind of like a racially profiled
Stu: because he's Pakistani. So, there's dealing with racial elements within New York.
Stu: It's actually a remake of a British show called Criminal Justice.
Stu: So, I do think the fact that this show becomes more melodramatic and is more
Stu: interesting in character theme is part of the reason it's had these conversations,
Stu: because it is designed to create those conversations.
Stu: The first episode ends with the reveal. He did it, and it is incontrovertible
Stu: evidence that he murdered her. The question that is, which is put in our mind
Stu: in the second episode, is the detectives want to know his motivation.
Stu: The murder weapon, they want his motivation. The murder weapon is the kind of
Stu: external plot device for them to go and understand his psychology.
Excerpts: Jade, we are really grateful you agreed to talk to us. I agreed to die.
Excerpts: And I thought I just got pulled off lunch.
Excerpts: Look, we can tell you that we have arrested one suspect. Sorry. Yeah, Jamie.
Excerpts: But we need some more information, both on the murder weapon,
Excerpts: which we don't yet have, and why the suspect did it.
Stu: And look, I don't work in the British, I mean, A, I'm not a lawyer.
Stu: I have a law degree, but I'm not a lawyer. B, I don't work in the British criminal justice system.
Stu: But I looked at them and went, I mean, they're talking about like having the
Stu: murder weapon and his motivation is going to make it a, you know,
Stu: make the case and add some urgency to it. But I mean, I don't know.
Stu: That's, it seems they've got pretty definitive advantage of the insides did
Stu: it. It's just to the degree to which he's going to plea bargain or whatever.
Stu: But the show isn't talking about it on that level. It stops being about the
Stu: procedural elements in the second episode.
Stu: And so there's two things that happens in this second episode.
Stu: There is this plot question of, will those detectives be able to find the murder
Stu: weapon and uncover the motivation?
Stu: Motivation is a really interesting thing to uncover because we're talking about character.
Stu: So we're assigning a plot question that is about revealing another person's character.
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: Which is kind of how Jack Thorne, the co-writer and co-creator of the show,
Stu: explains much more simply.
Excerpts: Adolescence is not a whodunit, it's a whodunit. How did this boy end up in this place?
Stu: And interestingly, if you go back to episode one, these are the questions the
Stu: detectives themselves are asking, prompting the audience to wonder, whodunit?
Excerpts: Do you want to give us a reason why? Hmm? Why would you do something like this?
Excerpts: Jamie, do you want to explain? You want to say sorry to Katie's mum,
Excerpts: who I had to talk to just past midnight last night while she was sobbing on
Excerpts: the floor because her daughter is gone.
Excerpts: Do you want to say sorry to her?
Stu: But let's get back to episode two.
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: The son of the detective is conveniently at this school, right?
Stu: That is a decision that they have made because they want to explore the relationship
Stu: between this detective, Luke, Detective Luke Bascombe, Detective Sergeant Misha Frank.
Stu: So Detective Bascombe, Luke's son is at this school.
Excerpts: You only got a kid in the school? Yeah. Yeah.
Excerpts: Adam, right? Yeah. Yeah, no, he's off if he didn't know.
Excerpts: He didn't get any cheekbones, did he? I don't see what that has to do with him.
Excerpts: Can you tell me about him?
Stu: And what is interesting about this episode on the macro level is that he doesn't
Stu: solve the plot until he has an emotional event with his son.
Stu: The emotional event is that his son's disconnected from him.
Stu: We get this sense that they're distant from each other.
Stu: Well, we don't even get a sense. We see it. And it's only later on when him
Stu: and his son are in a room and he basically learns that he needs to listen to
Stu: these kids that he's able to, quote unquote, solve the plot.
Excerpts: Right someone said something to you because listen i've got sniffer dogs people
Excerpts: now in drains and all sorts of stuff going on ads it's not going well because you're not getting it,
Excerpts: what am i not getting you're not reading what they're doing what's happening
Excerpts: what are you talking about insta you've been looking at insta right.
Chas: I mean, he still doesn't find the knife.
Stu: No, but he finds the boy, which is Ryan, that says that Jamie used his knife.
Stu: So, to me, it feels like, well, that's close enough. They found the person that
Stu: says, yes, he had my knife.
Chas: They do actually resolve the two. The central dramatic question posed at the
Chas: beginning of the episode, will these detectives find out what motivated Jamie and will they find...
Chas: You know, some further evidence to, to convict Jamie from going to the school.
Stu: And I think that is just tied to a character question, which is,
Stu: will Luke, and it's not Nisha, it's, it's, will Luke connect with his son, right?
Stu: Yeah. It's a character question that is posed and it's answered by the end of
Stu: the episode because they go off to get, um, uh, basically a snack,
Stu: fries from a Chinese, chips.
Chas: From a Chinese takeaway. Take away.
Stu: But earlier, like, I mean, that resolves their relationship,
Stu: but it's when they spend time together that he's able to learn Ryan.
Stu: You know, he learns about the emojis and the secret language of teenagers and
Stu: that leads him to Ryan, et cetera, et cetera.
Stu: So, the emotional event changes it.
Chas: Well, I was going to make an observation that while this second episode does,
Chas: I feel, feel more of a piece to the first episode than it does to the later
Chas: two, in that we still have actual, we've got a lot of characters.
Chas: They are, we're following detectives undergoing a procedure.
Chas: And we still do shift POV away from Bascombe.
Chas: Like, not as much as the first episode, but in particular, we are following
Chas: one of Katie's best friends.
Chas: So, we're introduced to her through the detectives interviewing her.
Chas: And what I really appreciated was Jade almost hung a lantern on perhaps one
Chas: of the arguments that could be leveled at the whole theme of this.
Chas: They're exploring the violence, manosphere, misogyny, youth being affected by
Chas: social media. These are all these themes they're talking about.
Chas: But Jade actually calls out why we always, and I think Detective Frank as well at the end says,
Chas: so those two female characters in this story is like really bugs me how we're
Chas: always talking about the killer here, not about the victim.
Chas: And if we are talking about the victim, we're trying to find this,
Chas: you know, what it is that they did that was asking for it.
Excerpts: Are you saying that she didn't like him because we've got Instagram posts from
Excerpts: her that suggest that they were friends? So you're trying to blame this all on her? Is that it? No.
Excerpts: Well, we've got video. Everyone knows. I don't know why I'm talking. It's okay.
Excerpts: Look, we're not asking you to talk bad about it. You are! You are can hear in all of you. No, Jade.
Excerpts: Can I go now, Lowell School? Their politeness. Well, I'm really feeling polite
Excerpts: today. Can I go now, Miss Lowell School? This is phenomenal.
Chas: But we do, there is a point where we actually leave to see Jade in a scene with
Chas: the teacher with none of the detectives around at all.
Chas: And then we just learn about Jade's life, essentially.
Stu: Yeah. And so, this is where I think the show is becoming more melodramatic in
Stu: this episode. This is kind of, this is melodrama slash detective.
Stu: And I think it is not, melodrama is part of every, is part of the first three episodes.
Stu: They're kind of a genre mix. The first one is police detractive,
Stu: like the procedural or an ob-doc kind of style and genre.
Stu: Using melodramatic tools to explore the question of what is the impact of this
Stu: juvenile crime. I'm just processing a 13-year-old for the accusation of murder.
Stu: The second episode is very clearly about the impact on other students,
Stu: about having both a girl from the school being killed and the accused murderer,
Stu: which all the kids are convinced he actually did it, which probably tells you
Stu: all you need to know, really.
Excerpts: Me and Taylor told me we need to open a grief support room. With security guards
Excerpts: and social workers now, are we great?
Excerpts: Just worry about the impact it's going to have on the kids, you know. It's a lot.
Excerpts: Keep an eye on it. Yeah.
Stu: Okay. And the show makes a, it almost does the children of men thing where it's in the one-er.
Stu: It will walk past a bunch of kids, right? Or kids talking to themselves.
Stu: Part of the kind of handover technique, which we'll unpack a little bit later,
Stu: is that we'll follow a group of kids having these conversations.
Stu: Right. So, it's bringing, by exploring the world, it's beginning us to make
Stu: us ask questions and think about the world.
Stu: This is the kind of, the thematic stuff.
Stu: And all these kids are powerless, and so are the teachers. And one of the things
Stu: I think is melodramatic, and it still is my argument against Emma.
Stu: So, Em's main thing about this show not being melodrama is she saw melodrama
Stu: as requiring, like, an exaggeration of performance, right?
Stu: So, the emotions are all very exaggerated. The example she kept on giving was
Stu: Australia as an example of a modern
Stu: melodrama that is also kind of got stereotypical kind of characters,
Stu: like the big moustache twirling villain, et cetera, et cetera.
Stu: Right. And that to me is a form of melodrama, you know, soap operas, et cetera.
Stu: But the kind of stuff that we're talking about, which is ordinary people in
Stu: extraordinary circumstances are clearly here interested in exploring the impact
Stu: of these events on people that can't actually change the plot is definitely what's going on here.
Chas: Yeah. And even if we look at the more plotty element of this episode too-
Chas: Will the police detectives find the knife or find out, uh, Jamie's motivation?
Chas: The, the first half of the episode is basically teaching us the futility of
Chas: the exercise that they're going under.
Chas: They, you know, repeat the same speech in two different classrooms to various
Chas: different levels of ridicule, including, uh, one kid, uh, oinking at them.
Chas: There's a fire well a
Chas: fire alarm goes off the entire school files out there's a fight involving jade
Chas: and ryan one of jamie's friends out in the parade ground then all the kids file
Chas: back in and the the detectives resume their mission and it's then that adam
Chas: luke uh detective d.i bascom's son intervenes.
Stu: I just want to kind of come back to finish my point
Stu: which which connects to what you said because emma is a i've
Stu: been speaking of how this connected em's a high school teacher who's also
Stu: doing a master's of psychology her thesis was only social
Stu: behavior disorder she works in education development psychology
Stu: like and so the the school playground scene she was like the teachers seem too
Stu: incompetent they're a little bit too yelly right in terms of how to maintain
Stu: the kids they're exaggerated and i'm like she was like hiding i'm like exaggerated
Stu: they've made the choice to exaggerate these teachers to make school,
Stu: make the kids feel more difficult, right?
Stu: And, you know, there's some good behind the scenes where they tell the kids
Stu: just to ignore the teachers. That was kind of their direction to the extras.
Stu: So there's probably an improvisational quality to what the kids are doing.
Excerpts: There's 300 kids, as well as all of the teachers or the chaperones that are
Excerpts: being led around by lots of dressed in ADs.
Excerpts: So, it's got to be really meticulously planned out. You're going to get instructions
Excerpts: from the cast teachers to get back in line. Do not listen to them.
Stu: But there is a sense that they have made that decision to hide the performances of the teachers,
Stu: make them slightly more incompetent than they are in terms of maintaining discipline
Stu: in the classroom, because they wanted to make the school feel like a prison,
Stu: which is what one of the characters says.
Stu: It's got a narrative and thematic purpose in terms of what they're saying.
Chas: And it makes both the teachers, the detectives, and the students feel hopeless.
Chas: That there is no way out of this. And it was interesting. It was in that,
Chas: again, in that, you know, we'll probably come back when we're talking about
Chas: the micro and we're talking about plotting.
Chas: But it was a beautiful scene between the
Chas: two detectives where they they take a a beat
Chas: out of the the plot story like they're
Chas: about to head back to the like to leave the
Chas: school and they are just
Chas: talking about the school and bascom is
Chas: seeing it as like a waste of time that all
Chas: the kids are uh watching screens and no
Chas: one's learning and it's like a terrible experience and
Chas: frank is like well this was like my school and there will be a few
Chas: good teachers in there and there'll be a few good kids in there
Chas: interesting having them for a scene
Chas: removed the plot questions and
Chas: it starts out asking some character questions of
Chas: the two of them it's like what was your experience of school kind of
Chas: thing but very quickly becomes them talking
Chas: essentially about thematic stuff because it removes the
Chas: it resolves the character questions about what they're asking each other almost
Chas: instantly and so then the rest of that scene is just kind of talking about what
Chas: is this show about essentially through the the resolution of both the the plot
Chas: questions and the character questions within that scene do.
Excerpts: You know what i don't like about all this go on right the perpetrator always
Excerpts: gets the front line a man raped a woman we followed jamie's brain around this entire case, right?
Excerpts: Katie isn't important, Jamie is. Everyone will remember Jamie,
Excerpts: no one will remember her.
Excerpts: That's what annoys me, that's what gets to me.
Excerpts: I think you're wrong i think we're here for katie we're
Excerpts: here for our parents we're here to get answers it's our job to understand why
Excerpts: you can't understand why do you actually think you can we've got the video we
Excerpts: know what you did you're not gonna know why mate look at all the things we've
Excerpts: seen you are not gonna know why you just won't okay misha look go back to the station,
Excerpts: i'm gonna go and talk to ryan one last time yeah but you've spoken to ryan i know but he's,
Excerpts: not saying something i know there's more you coming or not sorry.
Chas: I feel like i've jumped into a micro observation there but.
Stu: No no i mean i'm probably stop it
Stu: breaks up my lecturing and we'll come back because these things are
Stu: connected right ultimately the macro and micro have to
Stu: work hand in hand for them to execute um so
Stu: by episode three we've jumped seven
Stu: weeks we follow a new protagonist so i think in
Stu: the preview seven months sorry i think in the second episode there's a clearer
Stu: protagonist and that's um luke baskin yeah right detective luke baskin in the
Stu: same way i think episode three has a newer a clear protagonist which is the
Stu: forensic psychologist uh bryany i think her name is who comes to interview jamie.
Excerpts: I've been employed by your team but i don't work for you i'm writing an independent
Excerpts: that's a very important word okay an independent pre-sentence offense report
Excerpts: which the judge will read in order
Excerpts: to get an understanding of you and your understanding of the charges okay.
Stu: What's interesting is they make
Stu: it kind of clear that she's actually working for his team so
Stu: she's not there to elicit a confession right because
Stu: there is a version of this where it's him being interviewed by
Stu: more senior detectives or police forensic psychologists or something like that
Stu: and they're trying to get something out of him for the case by making her work
Stu: for his team they're making this more about an exploration of character in fact
Stu: she just constantly says she wants to know his understanding right that becomes a running joke i.
Excerpts: Am just here to get an understanding of your understanding and i understand
Excerpts: that you need to have an understanding of my understanding,
Excerpts: Go on.
Stu: Her plot question is to understand his character, which really means that this
Stu: is, again, sitting in that plot character thing.
Stu: And really, I would say it's just a character question.
Stu: And she's just got a motivation to kind of get in in there. Because as we have
Stu: talked about when we've explored plot character stuff and plot,
Stu: plot is got a very clear, like the bomb is turned off.
Stu: Like there's very clear yes or no kind of answers to plot.
Stu: You know, have they discovered who did it? Have they discovered the murder weapon,
Stu: et cetera? Does she, how can you dramatize that she has an understanding of who he is?
Chas: Right? Yeah. There's a lot of setup in this episode.
Chas: I mean, it's in a way the simplest of the three episodes. She's a clear protagonist
Chas: and remains the protagonist throughout.
Chas: And we say in her POV the entire time.
Chas: There's no other storyline. There's no other central dramatic question.
Stu: I mean, there's the kind of the interesting stuff around the guard being slightly
Stu: flirtatious with her, kind of getting in her space, et cetera.
Stu: But we'll come to that as part of the micro strategies.
Chas: And there's a lot of setup of her before Jamie is brought in.
Chas: And I think that's possibly one of the narrative reasons the guard exists where
Chas: it's, you know, it's establishing that she's got to do an assessment of Jamie.
Chas: It's about his ability to, can he be criminally liable or not?
Chas: Can he be responsible for his actions?
Chas: Yes, she's been chosen by Jamie's team, but she gives an independent report to the judge.
Chas: And it also establishes that she's the second psychologist to do this with Jamie.
Excerpts: You're on five visits. Yes. And you know what you're going to say in the report?
Excerpts: I wouldn't be here if I knew that.
Excerpts: Well, the other one, the other one of you, we only needed three. You can't say any more.
Excerpts: It's important I don't know anything about what the other psychologist says, does or thinks.
Excerpts: It's about making the right assessment, not the fastest. Sorry,
Excerpts: I'm just being an idiot. No, that's just the way I work.
Chas: So there's a lot of setup before they get into the cheese and pickle sandwich, as it were, of the scene.
Stu: I mean, the cheese and pickle sandwich is a great representation that effectively
Stu: it is, the cheese and pickle sandwich dramatizes the emotional event.
Stu: Right? Which is, at the beginning, she is trying to build rapport with him. She brings him food.
Stu: She's kind of being like a little bit nurturing towards this kid.
Stu: And then at the end, she is so disturbed by what she's experienced that she
Stu: can't even like touch the pickle sandwich.
Stu: Right. She's kind of disgusted by it. So that is a way to dramatize the emotional
Stu: event that has occurred, which is that, I mean, I mean, the good thing about
Stu: emotional events as we talked about is they don't actually have to be that precise.
Chas: It's.
Stu: Character stuff right it doesn't have to be like is the have they saved the
Stu: world no it's like i think she's kind of a little bit terrified of him.
Chas: Yeah absolutely or terrified of what he represents i
Chas: mean there's you talk about the emotional event there's
Chas: two times where james jamie
Chas: stands over her while she remains seated
Chas: and he's yelling at her and it
Chas: is yeah deliberately terrifying but
Chas: she does not in those scenes in
Chas: those moments in her performance reveal any emotion
Chas: in one of them the guard interrupts the first one and she takes a beat she goes
Chas: out ostensibly to get another hot chocolate but ends up just breathing uh going
Chas: and checking on wanting to see what jamie is doing while she's not in the room
Chas: yep and then coming back in having forgotten the hot chocolate.
Stu: Yes.
Chas: And it's clear that she's missing some objectives in her questioning in the second-
Chas: buildup is more pointed. And to me, it was really clear that she had to establish
Chas: Jamie's understanding of his understanding of a couple of things.
Chas: Did he understand that Katie was dead? Did he understand what that meant?
Chas: Did he understand what being found guilty of killing katie meant so she was
Chas: driving at some clear objectives and that escalated in the second.
Stu: Part of.
Chas: That because i think she felt uncomfortable and wanted to bring it to a close sooner.
Stu: So she had kind of somewhat plot objectives is what you're saying yeah.
Chas: But they're not very clear.
Stu: No so.
Chas: We don't know when she when she's completed the plot right we i mean we do when
Chas: she tells us it's up right we're done i i have what i need but we don't know
Chas: what the you know you're talking about the game of the scene we don't know what the win conditions.
Stu: Of
Chas: The scene are.
Stu: No because this episode is about all about the why done
Stu: it and the why yeah it's a character question that is related to
Stu: the thematic questions right and so
Stu: this is an exploration of all that stuff and look
Stu: it's got structure the midpoint i guess of
Stu: this episode is when he loses his temper with her so we see that the first aspect
Stu: of like jamie breaking something and we're like oh fucking you know because
Stu: again we at this point we've seen the footage but we are also wanting to learn
Stu: more about Jamie the first episode told us definitely that Jamie didn't,
Stu: It didn't give us the why. And we're going in here aligned with her.
Stu: So, this is actually similar to how the first episode has worked.
Stu: Right. And I guess in a way, the second episode too, because the detectives
Stu: in the second episode are interviewing, are talking to students.
Stu: They're not combing the school looking for the murder weapon.
Stu: Right. They're not kind of using sniffer dogs or whatever.
Stu: Right. They're actually just talking to kids to find out what the kids know,
Stu: if any of the kids have found something.
Chas: Right. And they're not even, like, other than Jade and Ryan,
Chas: they're not having one-on-one interviews. They're going and making class announcements,
Chas: begging for- Information.
Chas: Information to be brought to them by school students who are ridiculing them.
Chas: Like, yeah, it's very different to this one.
Stu: No, but I'm just saying, like, it's different, but also at the same time,
Stu: because it's them literally interrogating characters.
Chas: Yeah. And she manages to accidentally twice elicit a confession from Jamie,
Chas: which gets him really upset. But that's not her intention.
Chas: Her intention is just to ascertain his understanding for some procedural purpose.
Chas: But we are not, we're giving her a whole lot of clues and inklings.
Chas: But like I said, we don't know what the win condition is.
Chas: So we're coming into this scene where she has an objective that is allowing
Chas: us as the audience to access the why done it.
Stu: Yes.
Chas: But it's not, that's not really her purpose. She's not there to understand Jamie's
Chas: motivation. She's there to understand his, uh.
Stu: Understanding.
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: But in the absence of anything else, we're going to, we're, we're latched onto it.
Chas: Oh, for sure. And it's, it is riveting.
Chas: And it is, I mean, I think it's going to be very few listeners who have listened
Chas: to this far without having seen the show.
Chas: But it was in this episode that I was so keenly aware of how well cast Jamie was.
Chas: I mean, not only is he giving an incredible performance, but he is a tiny 13-year-old
Chas: boy who genuinely pulls off being frightening.
Chas: I don't think she was ever physically frightened in that she thought that she
Chas: couldn't physically escape the situation, but I think she was frightened of his rage, of...
Chas: What he represented of how a 13-year-old boy could become this.
Stu: Well, I mean, it's got the whole,
Stu: you know, I mean, I'm just going to connect it to stuff in your life.
Stu: Like, it's like, how do you deal with violent elderly people?
Stu: It's like, how do you deal?
Stu: I mean, this is why juvenile offenders, I think, are so shocking to,
Stu: you know, I mean, they constantly come up in the Australian media, right?
Stu: Because it is like, how do we deal with them?
Chas: But, okay, to take a step back while we're still talking about the micro,
Chas: this episode three is still somewhat sitting in crime procedural.
Chas: Like it is an interview with a criminal.
Stu: Oh, yeah.
Chas: Right? It's pretty classic genre trappings, right?
Stu: Yes. I think all three, I think the first three episodes are kind of crime melodrama.
Chas: Yeah. But I think with each successive episode, the central dramatic questions
Chas: have become less clear and less relevant.
Stu: I think they're clear, but they're not plot.
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: I just don't think they're driven, like, they're not as driven by plot.
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: The plot starts becoming less and less pressing to the point where there's,
Stu: like, does it actually make a difference?
Stu: Like, what's the urgency, the goal stakes and the urgency of this? She is writing a report.
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: Right?
Chas: And it feels like she could come back as often as she wants to get it done.
Chas: It's not like the report's due in 25 minutes or anything like that.
Stu: Yeah, she's just made the decision that she will probably get what she needs
Stu: from him at this point, which she does.
Chas: Yes.
Stu: You know, much to his disappointment. So, it's just an interesting conversation around genre.
Stu: And then I think in the last episode, it does do a genre shift.
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: Right? Into kind of like Ken Loach kind of British social realism, right, with melodrama.
Stu: And it's got a very light plot.
Stu: And this is me talking about it being like, I guess, Little Bit Hero's Journey a little bit.
Stu: And this is me just being amused by it, because when I thought about it,
Stu: I was like, oh, it's very melodramatic, like, kind of a little bit mumblecore.
Excerpts: Lisa, get downstairs, love! What?
Excerpts: Be calm to him. We're going to Wainwright. Can't I just stay here? No, you can't stay here.
Excerpts: Someone's just vandalised the van. Who knows what they'll do next?
Excerpts: Not leaving you here on your own.
Excerpts: Why would I want to go to Wainwright? Because I'm asking you to go to Wainwright.
Excerpts: Because I've got the breakfast sign. Girls, please, please, girls, do me a favour.
Excerpts: Please, help me out, love, I'm saying. All right. All right,
Excerpts: yeah, we'll all go. Yeah? We'll get the table back. Eh?
Excerpts: We'll get the table back. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah,
Excerpts: we'll get the day back, eh? Yeah, it's my birthday, isn't it?
Stu: So the fourth episode is spending time with the family on Eddie's birthday.
Stu: He discovers that there is graffiti on his van, and he gets the whole family
Stu: in the van, and they drive off.
Stu: So they're literally leaving the ordinary world into the extraordinary world,
Stu: and then he kind of comes back from that experience changed.
Chas: Right?
Stu: But there is just enough of a plot engine to force these characters together.
Stu: It's not just being with them in their grief.
Chas: I mean, the plot question is, will he get the van cleaned?
Stu: Yeah.
Chas: Right? But it's essentially it. But that plot question, there is a good scene, like a solid scene.
Chas: It feels like before that, he even discovers that, like it's his daughter who
Chas: discovers that his van's been graffitied and she tells him.
Chas: It opens on him being in his shed,
Chas: he finishes a cup of tea while he's outside tipping the tea into a flower pot,
Chas: comes in and his wife's cooking him a special breakfast for his 50th birthday
Chas: and they have a cute scene together.
Chas: And all through that scene, obviously, the inciting incident has yet to happen.
Chas: But I think in the absence of the inciting incident, what is driving the scene
Chas: from the audience coming in, we also know it's 13 months later.
Chas: So, that's the first thing that we are told, 13 months later.
Chas: And I think all we're being told as an audience to ask is what is the impact
Chas: of what Jamie has done on this family?
Stu: And.
Chas: That question is resolved and it is a it is a character question it is a melodrama,
Chas: question it's not a a plot question at all.
Stu: No i mean the as you said the plot question is really light right yeah as in
Stu: like it is a clear question can he can't get that off his van and the answer
Stu: is it turns out is no right right at.
Chas: The end he's like i'll get it re-sprayed.
Stu: Yes. Yes.
Chas: Like almost none of the drama that was driving him in his panic and his rage was necessary.
Stu: And that is the midpoint of the episode is him losing his shit at the,
Stu: and so then it becomes about the impact of his violence on the family.
Stu: And then we're with the characters and there is also an emotional event at the end of this episode.
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: Which is the kind of the, the family, I mean, enduring, I guess,
Stu: which is coming back to our melodrama episode.
Stu: We talked a lot about endurance and, you know, what is the price of enduring
Stu: these, what happens to them? And it's their, one, their decision to stay.
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: So there is this question about whether or not they move, which is not a,
Stu: which can be a plot question, but the way it's presented is as a character question, right?
Stu: Or a question of values between the wife and Eddie.
Excerpts: This isn't going to get any better.
Excerpts: Me mum says she can get you work. I don't need your mum to get me work.
Excerpts: What would I want your mum to get me work for? Hey, I've got work here.
Excerpts: Love, I've got lads that depend on me. No, I know that. Love,
Excerpts: she's got college, hasn't she?
Excerpts: Right? Do you want to take her out of college? Do you want to ruin her fucking
Excerpts: life as well? Hey, look, do you think moving back to Liverpool, it'll be any better?
Excerpts: Because I promise you now, it'll be 10 times fucking worse, and you know that.
Excerpts: You know that, love. You know it'll be worse. We've done nothing wrong, have we?
Excerpts: Have we done anything wrong? No. No, so we're not moving.
Stu: And so the daughter then kind of intervenes to say that she wants to stay.
Chas: Or that there's no point in moving.
Stu: Yeah.
Excerpts: But we're staying here. We're not moving. We can't move.
Excerpts: Be cool too, though. Mum, mum, if we move, it'll be better for a bit,
Excerpts: but then someone's just going to find out something.
Excerpts: And then that, that something, that something's going to be everything,
Excerpts: and then it'll just be even worse.
Excerpts: You know,
Excerpts: it's Jamie. Jamie's ours. It's new.
Stu: Yeah.
Chas: And so there is a, you know, that question is raised and resolved,
Chas: but it's not really a plot question.
Chas: It's a dramatization of, yeah, what is the impact?
Stu: Yeah. The van thing is interesting because it's not a strong plot in the sense
Stu: of forcing the character to do something, but the character's reaction to it
Stu: becomes a driver, right?
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: And it's interesting because it gives him kind of power.
Stu: Like in a way, Eddie feels like he's got power in this episode.
Stu: He's getting the, you know, he's ordering the family into the van.
Stu: He goes in to get the paints, kind of threading, you know, finds the youths that are responsible.
Chas: Oh, I mean, I can relate to this so hard because when I'm in a heightened state,
Chas: all I want to do is take action. I cannot sit still.
Chas: And he is in the same way. He just has to take action. He cannot sit with this.
Stu: Yeah. And it's beautifully observed. I thought it was really interesting how,
Stu: I think one of the things they did, and this is almost like a review observation,
Stu: that what they did with Eddie, which is really interesting, is I definitely
Stu: get this sense of that he's someone who's actually worked on his anger management, right?
Stu: And I feel sympathetic for him because he fights so hard to not hurt those kids.
Stu: He's still scary as fuck.
Stu: And also his, and the impact on his wife, I think, Amanda, I think her name
Stu: is, you know, that she's lived up with someone and like, she kind of,
Stu: I guess, loves the, loves him for the fact that he's tried to be a better father
Stu: than his, than his father.
Stu: And, you know, he is, but he, it's still not enough.
Stu: So it leaves us with, and they ask each other questions that become very active
Stu: by them talking through these issues as a character level. That's kind of why
Stu: the episode and the show kind of launches these conversations, right?
Stu: Particularly in the last episode. I think if this episode was like episode two,
Stu: right, and then we went back to something else, I'm not sure if the show would
Stu: have, I mean, it's purely speculative, of course, have the kind of conversation
Stu: started because it very deliberately ends with this question around the parents. Have they done enough?
Stu: What is their responsibility for these kids, et cetera?
Stu: And it is very happy to leave it unresolved.
Chas: I just want to latch onto that because that question, that specific aspect of
Chas: the character question.
Chas: So we've got the broad, I mean, as we said in the beginning,
Chas: this fourth episode is very much in Eddie's point of view. I think there's only
Chas: one moment I can remember of the whole episode where we're not in Eddie's perspective.
Chas: And it's just a moment where they're coming in from back from the hardware store.
Chas: They've had the violent altercation.
Chas: He's had the drive to calm down. They've had the call from Jamie where Jamie
Chas: has told them he's going to change his plea to guilty.
Chas: Eddie goes inside first and we stay with Manda as she's hanging up her coat and she cries.
Stu: Yeah great paul in fact stephen graham and jack thorne talk about that as being
Stu: in one of their favorite moments in the whole series.
Excerpts: For me one of the most beautiful moments sorry is just to pick up on that point
Excerpts: is in episode four when we follow them on a journey and they come back and it's
Excerpts: the most simplistic of things but it's to me it's the most beautiful moment
Excerpts: and it's when and Christine hangs a coat on the peg.
Excerpts: And it's just, you know, within the context of about, what, 30,
Excerpts: 40 seconds, she gets to pour this immense amount of emotion,
Excerpts: after everything she's just experienced on that journey, but also all of the
Excerpts: baggage she's been carrying from the moment that the police raided the house
Excerpts: and arrested their son, and she just lets that all go.
Excerpts: And then she pulls herself back to get there and she walks up the stairs and
Excerpts: we get to see that as an audience you would never really get to experience that
Excerpts: within the context of how we experience it if it wasn't this formula you know
Excerpts: you just wouldn't be able to.
Excerpts: Alfred Hitchcock has got this quote he says dialogue is just the words actors
Excerpts: say while their faces tell the story which is something I've always believed and in this show,
Excerpts: the faces carry everything that you know like you know and and and unlocking
Excerpts: unlocking the need to see inside what she's feeling at that moment is as simple
Excerpts: as just seeing a put up a coat yeah.
Chas: And that i think is the only moment in the whole episode when we're not with
Chas: eddie and in his perspective she goes up and joins him in the bedroom and it's
Chas: an incredible two-hander scene.
Chas: But it's in that scene that they raise the question of
Chas: and and answer it for themselves is how
Chas: responsible are we as parents for Jamie and they're
Chas: wrestling with it because like uh Eddie says like
Chas: my father beat me with a belt and and they don't go into this level of detail
Chas: but he's like but I didn't go and kill anyone and here I am trying to make myself
Chas: a better person but I created Jamie and they're they're wrestling with that question and it's only,
Chas: I'm not I think there would have been so many ways different
Chas: ways that they could have got to that same scene with these
Chas: characters in this situation 13 months later
Chas: but they've chosen for this particular
Chas: episode to wrestle with eddie's sense of responsibility of masculinity there's
Chas: a lot about eddie's own relationship with his own father and then just like
Chas: that beautiful ending scene where he's in his son's bedroom crying in his son's
Chas: bed saying and apologizing to his son,
Chas: saying, I failed you.
Chas: Yeah. I mean, now I'm interested, having done all that, how do you think that
Chas: these raising and resolution of these character questions have for you raised thematic questions?
Stu: Well, okay. So-
Stu: Why am I watching this is what we've talked about with theme, right?
Stu: And I think the why in this case, the why done it is why did this character
Stu: do what they have done to me is a thematic question.
Stu: It's a more specific version of a thematic question than why am I watching this?
Stu: But I think maybe whys are theme, right?
Stu: Thematic questions just have a why in them. Why am I watching this?
Stu: Why did the character do this?
Stu: Why these are the consequences of that?
Stu: Because they kind of make us think about the broader world, right?
Stu: So, I think this kind of show has a character theme.
Stu: I haven't watched the latest season of White Lotus, but I think if you go through
Stu: and watch White Lotus season one, two, and probably three, they've got similar character theme stuff.
Stu: Because characters, one, can ask questions that speak, make us prompt questions,
Stu: right, when they're talking about their dilemma.
Stu: But particularly if we're interested in behavior, that's going to naturally talk to theme.
Stu: I mean, I've talked before about one of the reasons I like crime as a genre
Stu: is crime exists as a really interesting intersection in society, right?
Stu: Like crime is a constructed ideal, idea, right?
Stu: That kind of taps into, and criminality, what it taps into psychology,
Stu: taps into social, you know, norms, traps into sociology and all these things
Stu: that you can explore through crime dramas, which is why I think they're such a great genre.
Stu: I mean, we do talk about this, like, you know, there's so many sci-fi stories
Stu: that detective investigating a crime in this interesting sci-fi speculative fiction world, right?
Stu: That kind of works because one, not only does the detective have a driving purpose
Stu: and as a point of view character, but their job is to be in enforcing the rules of that society, right?
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: Or reacting against them. So I think thematic characters,
Stu: Character and theme can be related, particularly in stuff that is drama.
Stu: And when we're talking about melodrama, if we're interested in stuff that is
Stu: about the cost of enduring shows that are about the impact of crime,
Stu: it's going to make the audience ask a lot of questions. And this show can plant seeds.
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: Right. And it can do, and it can be incomplete the real time.
Stu: And this is a quote from Jack Thorne, one of the writers on the show.
Stu: Because he was like, what I love about the technical restraints of the one shot
Stu: is it lets the story be incomplete.
Stu: If I can't cut anywhere, then it actually takes the pressure off showing you everything.
Stu: You don't actually have to show us everything. You can't do it.
Stu: And we've got the reason to not do it, to not have the omniscient camera, right?
Excerpts: We knew from the very beginning that it was going to be a one shot series.
Excerpts: And it didn't complicate the writing at all, actually.
Excerpts: One of my heroes is Alan Aitbourne, the playwright, and the way that he uses
Excerpts: the technical to free the story
Excerpts: was actually the sort of thing that I kept returning to all the time,
Excerpts: that there's this kind of beauty to go,
Excerpts: okay, I'm in a corridor now, what the hell do I do?
Excerpts: And being able to tell an incomplete story is actually a real privilege that
Excerpts: in TV, the aim is always to go, okay, we need to understand everything.
Excerpts: We need to understand everything that's going on all the time.
Excerpts: We can cut anywhere, we can go anywhere, we can see everything.
Excerpts: So let's go inside the legal process. Let's go inside.
Excerpts: Eddie is feeling at any time of the day. Let's see everything and actually by
Excerpts: only being able to see some things it sort of allows you to have a more profound story.
Excerpts: It sort of encourages an audience to sit forward and it encourages you as a
Excerpts: writer to to to challenge yourself as to as to what is the important pieces to show.
Excerpts: What is the pieces that are going to unlock a conversation? What other pieces
Excerpts: that are going to make people think, you know.
Stu: And I think that means that they can walk past that conversation in the hallway
Stu: with the kids and one of them can bring up, um, Andrew Tate or one of the teachers
Stu: can bring up, that was one of the teachers that brings up Andrew Tate,
Stu: but one of the kids took about Ripple and they just don't have to come back
Stu: to it because we're not going to see those kids again.
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: Right. So they can just float this thing, right. Blow this bubble of an idea
Stu: in the air and kind of move on. Right.
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: And I think that is a really good, powerful combination of technique impacting
Stu: the thematic purpose of this, because the camera is about being immersive and
Stu: about bringing us into a world.
Stu: And so, these questions, these characters that Mander and Eddie are asking of
Stu: each other, we don't expect them to answer, because the show,
Stu: particularly by the fourth episode,
Stu: is clearly told us we're only spending one hour with them, and we know that
Stu: these characters are going to be with their grief for a long time.
Stu: So we don't, the story up there may be a feature film, which is about a parent
Stu: coming to terms, you know, I mean, we need to talk, you know,
Stu: we need to talk about Kevin.
Stu: Same kind of idea, I guess, but I haven't seen it. So I don't know whether she
Stu: ultimately comes to terms with that or not.
Chas: I would make an observation. I think, you know, this is so clearly melodrama,
Chas: but that's neither here nor there.
Chas: I think a show that deliberately has fewer and fewer plot questions as it progresses
Chas: and really focuses on the character questions, but does to an extent.
Chas: I know you're saying that they're unresolved or not necessarily completed,
Chas: but I think it has fewer and fewer of those questions and also shows us the futility.
Chas: I mean, almost by telling us that they're impossible to answer,
Chas: it does make us step back and ask these thematic questions. You know,
Chas: it's not to say that every melodrama will be asking thematic questions, right?
Chas: Just by focusing on impossible to resolve character questions.
Chas: I think this show in particular does, you know, that second episode to me,
Chas: it broadened the world out and introduced us to all these characters that just
Chas: sort of come and go, like Ryan,
Chas: like Jay, like these teachers and even Adam.
Chas: Right? the detective's son.
Chas: So, it raises them up as all examples and paradigms of this sort of uncaring world.
Chas: And it's by being so shallow and superficial as that second episode is,
Chas: and I mean that in a good way, right? We're not taking deep dives into who Ryan is.
Chas: We're not taking deep dives into who Jade is.
Chas: We're not taking deep dives into who Adam is in the same way that we are with,
Chas: you know, Jamie and Bryony in episode three, and then the Miller family in episode four.
Chas: It is forcing us to go, what is this show about? Why is it showing us these things?
Chas: Right? And I think really importantly for me, this fourth episode,
Chas: what it does, what it has done by and triggering the discussion that it has
Chas: is right up until that episode.
Chas: We could have squarely blamed Eddie for Jamie.
Chas: We had not been shown anything really about Eddie's character as an audience
Chas: that would have made us go, oh, well, he's just the product of an angry man or a misogynist, right?
Chas: And what that fourth episode does is it so clearly,
Chas: it shows a man who loves and respects It's his wife and his daughter who has
Chas: experienced violence but not perpetuated it on his son, who feels anger but
Chas: is dedicating himself to overcoming it.
Stu: He's still violent.
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: I don't think you can say he's not.
Chas: No, no. He assaults those two kids, but he never touched his son. No.
Stu: He doesn't punch them, but he picks up the kid and you can see he doesn't throttle him.
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: Takes out his anger on inanimate objects, right?
Stu: Like he redirects the anger to the van and, you know, he may be threatening, but.
Chas: But importantly for me, by doing all of that, it's telling us as an audience, this could be you.
Stu: Yeah.
Chas: These are not monsters creating a monster. They are reinforcing that these are
Chas: run of the mill everyday family.
Chas: And so it forces us to go, what would I do in this situation?
Stu: And again, I'm not, I mean, again, they actually have talked about that Steve
Stu: Graham and Jack Thorne that they wanted, they wanted that.
Excerpts: This wasn't about othering, Jamie. Don't put this in the extraordinary.
Excerpts: Make this feel like it could happen to you because that is the reality of what
Excerpts: is happening in our world it could happen to anybody you know what i mean we
Excerpts: thought it'd be interesting to shine a light on the devastation that causes
Excerpts: you know the ripple effect that that has on everybody.
Stu: It's not that we're finding you know we have solved the matrix puzzle of of
Stu: adolescence i like it when we're like oh i think this is what they're trying
Stu: to do and then they might not use these term the exact terms that we are but
Stu: they kind of go yeah we want to make people go oh this could be us And because
Stu: what they're not talking about,
Stu: they're not saying this could be us as in, I could be Eddie.
Stu: Stephen Graham is not going to be a 13 year old kid, right?
Stu: When he's saying this could be anyone, he's talking about having someone commit
Stu: violence within your family. And how do you deal with that?
Stu: And then it may seemingly come out of nowhere, right?
Stu: Absolutely feels like a very clear intentionality.
Stu: Like, I think this is a show where they had a very clear idea of what they wanted to do, right?
Stu: And had the expertise.
Stu: I mean, Jack Thorne is an incredible writer on his own. Stephen Graham,
Stu: you know, Philip is the director.
Stu: Like, that whole team came in and were able to thread the needle to find a way
Stu: of telling the story to explore the kind of questions that they wanted to explore.
Stu: And we're only looking at it on the macro level.
Stu: I do think it's worth going into some of the micro stuff we haven't kind of
Stu: dived into before we wrap up.
Stu: I do want to say in terms of the melodrama thing, I'm just going to give the
Stu: speech that I didn't give at the beginning.
Stu: The way I think about genre, and we talked about this on two episodes about genre,
Stu: but I'm interested in the emotional contract, what I call the emotional contract
Stu: between a show and a film, because I think for me as a writer thinking about
Stu: genre isn't from a high school English or a taxonomical kind of point of view.
Stu: It's that there is a relationship between an audience and a text,
Stu: and there's a reason they watch the thing.
Stu: Why do they pick that thing? It's because they want to think and feel in a particular way, right?
Stu: And then over time, writers have evolved ways, levers that they can use to kind
Stu: of do the thinking and the feeling in that particular way, right?
Stu: That's kind of what we were exploring.
Stu: And for me, melodrama is about big emotion.
Stu: I watch melodrama because I want to feel big emotion. That may come out of the
Stu: exaggerated kind of performances or it might come out of heightened performances, right?
Stu: I do think there is an element of melodrama in Mike Lee's work, right?
Stu: As realistic and realism to me as a style,
Stu: you know, the reason that we can't understand what people are saying on TV at
Stu: the moment is the consequences of realism being the push in a lot of similar
Stu: and night scenes that no one can see is because people are pushing for realism
Stu: and authenticity, right?
Chas: But Ken Loach's stuff is melodrama without being quote unquote melodramatic.
Stu: Exactly, right? And, and to me, there's two sides of the, the,
Stu: that kind of social realism versus melodrama.
Stu: They're kind of two sides of the same coin. They're all about big emotion, uh, and exploring.
Stu: And one of the tools they use to create that emotion is someone that's ordinary.
Stu: It's not comedy, but it is about a character that doesn't have the skills to solve the plot problem.
Stu: Right. Which is they, you know, Eddie and Mander are not going to be able to
Stu: get their sons out of prison.
Stu: You know, they're, they're not Helen Mirren in, you know, the Fast and the Furious
Stu: films trying to rescue Jason Stratham, you know, or that's a weird pull,
Stu: but you know, like that's.
Chas: They're not going to be able to undo what Jamie has done.
Stu: Yeah.
Chas: I think is almost more their powerlessness.
Stu: Jamie can't undo what he's done.
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: Right. As much as, I'm going to use your word, as much as Jamie is kind of the
Stu: shark in this film, right.
Chas: I haven't used that in this episode, but we talked about it off mic.
Stu: I know. And it's a really great pull because ultimately we don't actually spend
Stu: much time in Jamie's point of view. You know, part of the way we ask why about
Stu: Jamie is by not giving us that much access to Jamie, right?
Stu: So we can kind of project ideas onto him, project, it actually tries to not
Stu: give us, it's a great performance that we don't have much access to, right?
Stu: And in the third episode, he kind of does feel a little bit like a teenager playing evil,
Stu: but I think it kind of works because you're like, maybe he's just trying to,
Stu: he's a teenager deliberately trying to play evil, like he's being performative
Stu: for the psychologist. So I think it kind of works.
Chas: I mean, there were a couple of shifts in there that felt a bit-
Chas: performatively evil but i still bought it because it felt like he was being
Chas: so careful in that with her and he was trying to push her.
Stu: Boundaries oh the the boo when he's standing over her and it was really tense
Stu: and he boos and like that feels really authentic to how teenagers try to show
Stu: power to teachers where they know they don't really have power but they kind
Stu: of want to really push that bound,
Stu: like right up to that line of what they can get away with.
Stu: So that's part of the reason I was interested in this in melodrama is because
Stu: this is a show I don't think at the beginning, like I knew it was going to be
Stu: a tough watch, but not necessarily in the big emotion, tough watch.
Stu: And it took us four episodes to get there.
Stu: So it's harrowing from the beginning and even, you know, episode three is really
Stu: kind of like intense right but it has to do a lot of work to get us to this
Stu: four episode with all that like that emotional catharsis right.
Chas: Yeah anyway.
Stu: Should we go into the micro is there anything you feel specifically you want
Stu: to talk about or should we just.
Chas: Free flow so i mean we can
Chas: free flow i mean really and and i
Chas: think i'm hoping that i will in this discussion answer julian's
Chas: questions uh but i
Chas: think the i'm coming back to
Chas: what i said at the beginning they've chosen to have
Chas: this unity in time because it creates
Chas: urgency and it creates immediacy
Chas: and and thus tension while when
Chas: there's not actually a lot happening right like that's not
Chas: a fair description but like if you look at the the first
Chas: episode it really is just
Chas: it's quite mundane deliberately mundane like
Chas: obviously there's a raid at the beginning and that's not mundane but then you've
Chas: got a car ride taking of some bureaucratic notes and being offered cornflakes
Chas: a talk with a nurse search like it's treated as banal deliberately so what am
Chas: i trying to get to here so julian asks.
Chas: How do they stop the camera being a protagonist?
Chas: Well, I think that's because the intention of the one-er, and you had this comment
Chas: in when we did our one-er episode,
Chas: you were talking about the writers in those sequences are not talking about
Chas: the fact that it's a camera because they don't want the reader to be drawn directly.
Chas: Have their attention drawn to the camera, to the filmmaking.
Chas: And I think as much as this is a show where every man and his dog is talking
Chas: about how each episode is a one, and when you're watching it.
Chas: Even, I think you probably more than me, but there was only a few moments where
Chas: I felt the camera work was drawing attention to itself rather than serving the
Chas: intentionality of raising these character questions, raising this urgency,
Chas: raising this immediacy.
Chas: So, you talked about the drone shot in the second episode.
Chas: That's one where they very deliberately drew attention to the camera work.
Stu: Oh, and the shot going through the window when Ryan escapes.
Stu: Because they're, you know, because they talked about as much,
Stu: the DP has talked about how they've wanted the camera to be,
Stu: it doesn't go anywhere without a character. Like, it has to go somewhere with the character.
Stu: And those two moments that we've pointed out are moments where there's not a
Stu: character leading the action, right?
Excerpts: I'd written in this chase sequence, and this chase sequence took Bascom and
Excerpts: this boy beside the murder site, and then the camera was going to travel back
Excerpts: on its own back to the school.
Excerpts: That moment would have felt almost like a video game walking down the street.
Excerpts: I think it would just take the audience away from what the piece is.
Excerpts: And then Phil called me up and he said, Matt and I think we found a way to make the camera fly.
Stu: The drone particularly has this feeling, almost like a thematic feeling,
Stu: and it's got the kids singing because it picks up and gives us a God's eye view.
Stu: It's very clearly not a point of view, and they decided to do that to then kind
Stu: of break us and find Eddie.
Stu: So it gives us a moment of introspection. And I think the moment of like,
Stu: oh, the camera's flying now is actually like, and then it actually sits in it
Stu: and you go- Why is it flying?
Chas: Where are we going? Like it's wanting us, there's intention to it.
Stu: Exactly.
Chas: It wants us as the audience to feel that way.
Excerpts: If the camera could float away by itself, then it couldn't possibly be attached
Excerpts: to a person. It kind of feels more ethereal.
Excerpts: So you've got Baskin finding his own sort of resolution and you're with this
Excerpts: character, Jade, whose heart is pulled out.
Excerpts: And you're with all these kids as they pull out their phones and then the camera
Excerpts: takes off and the camera comes to rest at the murder site it was an example
Excerpts: of the technical meeting the story and finding a fusion which is actually better
Excerpts: than anything that the story had come up with on its own.
Stu: The the camera through the window feels
Stu: a little bit more like just a pacing choice that
Stu: that kind of seeing ryan run off
Stu: finding the detective and then following the detective was just going to be
Stu: too complex and possibly not going to have the adrenaline that they're looking
Stu: for but there's like it also feels like it's out of a like the great shot from
Stu: i think it's the second born where the born jump cameraman.
Chas: Jumps through the.
Stu: Behind born right it's got a bit of that feeling yeah that it's kind of like
Stu: oh we're with the detective um you know we're just kind of leading him at this
Stu: point rather than following him.
Chas: And they got incredible coverage right like there's some of those great like,
Chas: We were talking about it before, Mike, you talked about it like Steven Spielberg
Chas: coverage, like that scene between Eddie, Amanda in that fourth episode where
Chas: they're talking about their responsibility.
Chas: It shifts almost effortlessly from two shots to like close ups with foreground
Chas: and background action and back again.
Chas: And it's so well blocked and so well performed. But there is coverage,
Chas: you know, they're very deliberate in the interrogation scene with Bryony. as to whom they're on.
Chas: Like, we're actually on Jamie for a lot more than we're on Brian.
Stu: I mean, we're now getting into a little bit of a review, but for me,
Stu: the third episode had the least motivated camera work.
Stu: Like, where it was just doing the orbiting and it felt a little bit contrived
Stu: because Jamie will give a speech and then the camera will slowly creep over to find Brian.
Stu: He finished his speech just in time for her to deliver her dialogue.
Stu: And I'm like, hmm, I wonder if they had to ADR that speech to get the timing
Stu: right. Or does the operator just know the timing perfectly to get the rhythm of it?
Stu: Because it just felt so artificial to me, right?
Stu: I absolutely know it's my aesthetic sensitivity. I've worked in,
Stu: you know, I've been editing stuff since the 90s, since I was a teenager.
Stu: So, that kind of stuff just feels constructed to me in a way that if this wasn't
Stu: actually a documentary, you'd be struggling to find that stuff.
Stu: Right? Uh, or you'd be like doing the, anyway.
Chas: But my broad point is that they're wanting to use the, the constraint or dare
Chas: I say gimmick of one shot.
Chas: Right. And, and we've read articles about the amount of investment and technological
Chas: work and VFX that they've had to do to pull off that one.
Chas: Uh, but they've done it to create the urgency and immediacy,
Chas: but they are still focused. Their intention is still about character questions.
Chas: It's not about, you know, we looked at the adventures of Tintin.
Chas: In that sequence, the one was not about us understanding the internality of
Chas: Tintin, Haddock, and Snowy.
Chas: It was about the spectacle. It was drawing- Yeah.
Stu: Almost the Rube Goldberg machine, like the clockwork precision of this chase
Stu: and how cause and effect kind of stumbles together, right?
Stu: And this feels like part of the character questions is served by the fact that
Stu: the characters can't escape.
Stu: By playing out in real time with a shot that does not cut, the characters have got nowhere to go.
Stu: So it is pushing character, right?
Chas: Except when the writers want them to go there.
Stu: Yeah.
Chas: Like, let them off the hook, which is the French scenes aspect of it.
Stu: Yeah, I will give you the definition of French scenes in a moment.
Stu: But I do want to say that my personal definition of a scene,
Stu: which I think we talked about in the one episode, is that for me,
Stu: a scene generally kind of has unity of time, unity of place, and unity of action.
Stu: That's what I'm kind of was defining. And you could add unity of time to that.
Stu: And it's kind of interesting that one is start to make stories feel like they give a cohesion to it.
Stu: They disunify it by playing it all in one shot in real time. Right.
Chas: Now, in terms of the micro, how do they cope with this unity of time?
Chas: By the nature of their narrative choices, they've had more challenges in pacing
Chas: in episodes one and two where you have multiple storylines and multiple groups
Chas: of characters than you do in episodes three and four.
Chas: Episode three largely all happens in one room with two characters.
Chas: Episode four, there is a lot more. There's the three characters of the family.
Chas: They get leave the house
Chas: drive the van to the hardware store
Chas: they buy the paint they have the
Chas: physical eddie has the physical altercation with the kids
Chas: that he thinks has have graffitied his
Chas: van they drive back they have the
Chas: call and then they're back in the home again but
Chas: even on all of that there isn't the
Chas: same shifts of point of view and i'd like to just
Chas: draw in episode one i think i'm
Chas: going to be talking about most of my observations because it's like you've chosen
Chas: this constraint you're wanting to do something in real time and the
Chas: project i'm doing i'm not going to shoot it as a one or it's not
Chas: going to be written as a one there's going to be lots of
Chas: editing uh but it is supposed to be
Chas: happening in real time as it were so i'm
Chas: looking at this and going all right what tools that they used here
Chas: that i can i can steal or make
Chas: use of and i think in episode one they have
Chas: lots of point of view shifts where they shift from the
Chas: perspective character but there's not actually when i think about
Chas: it there's not actually a ton of narrative point
Chas: of view shifts in real and what i'm you
Chas: know drawing the distinction of what does.
Chas: The audience know in relation to the character that they're
Chas: following right and in episode one the
Chas: detectives know more than every other character in the show and more than the
Chas: audience so we're always behind the detectives we only catch up with them right
Chas: at the end when we have that big emotional event but every other character be it,
Chas: Jamie, Jamie's family, the lawyer, the social worker, the administrative police
Chas: person, the nurse, they all know just as much as Jamie.
Chas: They're meeting Jamie for the first time, right? They don't really know what he's done.
Chas: There's some talk about murder, but they don't know the details of the case.
Chas: And so there's not actually that many shifts in narrative point of view in episode
Chas: one, which surprises me when I think back to it. There are lots of shifts of point of view.
Chas: So, what do they do? They're really selective in- they know when they've got
Chas: travel time between locations and they've filled that travel time either with scenes.
Chas: So, the drive, they've got that great scene from the drive from the arrest of
Chas: Jamie to the police station where it's like almost a- Yeah.
Chas: It's the reading of Jamie's rights and explaining to him what's going to happen.
Chas: So they either and and often you
Chas: know they some of these scenes i feel
Chas: like are only there to maintain pacing so that because they
Chas: don't want to just sit with an actor or a character
Chas: moving along a corridor from one location to the
Chas: next so they're doing these these french scenes
Chas: and i think one of the most remarkable things that they did with the writing
Chas: of that episode one is they have introduced almost every single character before
Chas: we meet them so that we very rarely spend time when we're meeting a new character
Chas: when we've shifted point of view,
Chas: sitting in trying to ask those questions of who is this what do they want what
Chas: are they trying to do yeah and what do i mean by that so jamie is told by the
Chas: police officer what to what will happen when he reaches the police station he's
Chas: told by the police officer recommended to ask for a lawyer Jamie is asked if he wants a lawyer.
Chas: And then the lawyer appears. We know who he is and what his role is.
Chas: There is an entire conversation about how the procedure that they have to go through before,
Chas: They can interview Jamie, involves him having a health check and then separately a strip search.
Chas: And they say there's a scene where the two cops are talking about,
Chas: we need this to happen and this to happen and this to happen. And this person is late.
Stu: Yeah, clever.
Chas: So that when that person arrives, we know who they are, what their role is,
Chas: what they're there to do.
Stu: And then it just means it presents that person in character.
Stu: So, they just come in slightly shitty about the fact that this has all happened so early.
Chas: So, it's remarkable writing because what they are in such good control of is
Chas: what questions they want the audience asking at any given point in time.
Chas: And when they want to have the pace slowed down, when they want the audience
Chas: to dwell a little more in character questions, they just don't have to move
Chas: location or they stay with someone. Like, I've got a particular memory of D.I.
Chas: Bascom eating an apple as he's walking along a corridor.
Chas: I think they just took a moment where he could, like, breathe and let out the
Chas: adrenaline of what he's just gone through before he's preparing for the next thing.
Stu: And this is just a broader observation, which is, I think, the show is really
Stu: good at filling space with all these characters.
Chas: Right?
Stu: It wouldn't surprise me, though, in terms of how the show was made,
Stu: they had one week rehearsal, one week tech rehearsal, and then they had one
Stu: week to shoot it doing two takes a day.
Stu: Three of the four episodes where they used the take from the last day.
Stu: So, effectively, they had four days of rehearsal.
Stu: Really just where it's like the stakes are high. Except the first episode,
Stu: which was from day one, which is interesting.
Chas: Oh, wow. So, they used the take from day one of the shooting. Wow.
Stu: Episode one. That's not what they shot first. They shot episode three first,
Stu: which kind of made- makes sense that they wanted to get the head around the
Stu: logistics of this all. Anyway.
Chas: Yeah. But that's fascinating to me because it's like the most technical one.
Stu: Yeah. But I wonder if that's- maybe they shot it last because it is possibly-
Stu: yeah, it's interesting. Is it the most technical or is the second- I mean.
Chas: Episode two is probably pretty technical and you've got even more. The teenage extras.
Stu: But they actually talked about how they had ADs in plain clothes acting as teachers.
Stu: I mean, maybe that's why they're so heightened. They're just being ADs.
Stu: You know, having been yelled at by an AD before.
Stu: So, I think, so it wouldn't surprise me. So, it wouldn't surprise me that they
Stu: rehearsed the first episodes based off the script, but had to give everyone
Stu: action before they worked out where they're putting the camera.
Stu: Right. So, that, this is just a guess, but it feels like when they're pointing
Stu: the camera at person A, person B is only seen in the background,
Stu: but they've got a full life. Right.
Stu: And particularly, you can feel it really in the school environment.
Stu: These kids are having conversations and stuff like that.
Stu: And sometimes when you're directing extras, it's just, they're just talking nonsense. Right.
Stu: Or are kind of doing loops. That's something that you can kind of do with extras.
Stu: They kind of get these little loops of action. they can
Stu: do but because i think of the way this is made they probably
Stu: actually had to give all the characters dialogue and
Stu: like actually objectives within the scene right
Stu: and then they kind of could so then they could put the camera wherever they
Stu: wanted and then they didn't pull that stuff out maybe you know i you know they
Stu: probably had when you finished in this scene you probably had to go and get
Stu: changed and go to the other location or whatever but it just does feel that
Stu: a lot of these characters had very clear kind of paths,
Stu: like almost like a theme park or immersive theater.
Stu: Having gone to some immersive theater, this reminded me of that in a way,
Stu: except the decision of who to follow.
Stu: Like there was a play called The Wolf Play. It's kind of like a choose your
Stu: own adventure play where you're in a room and you can choose which they believe,
Stu: Fred scenes, we'll get back to that.
Stu: And they will leave and you can choose which path to follow.
Stu: And then Cameron was making that decision for you.
Stu: Now, who knows whether the writers had an appendix with like,
Stu: here's dialogue we've written for the kids or, you know, whether that was just
Stu: something that they kind of improvised together.
Stu: But to me, it still feels like story and writing that they have gone to that level of detail.
Stu: And that comes to kind of Julian's sound design point, right,
Stu: that I think they probably did write this dialogue.
Stu: It wasn't just offscreen mumble dialogue. It's like, let's write stuff that
Stu: makes sense because we may hear it.
Stu: You know, it's got a little bit of that kind of Nashville style,
Stu: Altman, you know, because Altman wouldn't tell people who he was shooting.
Stu: That was one of the key, key parts of his styles. He shot everything on zoom
Stu: long lenses and would get them to act.
Stu: And he wouldn't tell which, whose courage, he wouldn't tell the actors whose
Stu: coverage he was shooting because he wanted them all to be in the scene.
Stu: And this reminded me of that.
Stu: Which comes to French scenes. So this was a term I picked up from Will Dunn.
Stu: He's got two excellent books that friended the podcast.
Stu: Frenchie. These Frenchie, they're
Stu: not Frenchie scenes, but Frenchie gets credit for the French scenes.
Stu: The Will Dunn books, I'll put links in the show notes, excellent exercise-driven
Stu: books. They were all just exercises for writers.
Stu: And so he's got an exercise on French scenes. And I'm going to read the whole thing.
Stu: Named after a 17th century french system for
Stu: identifying scenes in a dramatic script a french scene is a
Stu: unit of dramatic action demarcated by the
Stu: entrance or exit of a character each time someone
Stu: comes or goes a new combination of characters form and a new french scene begins
Stu: right if there are a number of such comings and going one scene can be made
Stu: up of several french scenes um french scenes affect the tempo of dramatic action
Stu: which may feel fast-paced if they are abundant and slow-paced if they're not.
Stu: French scenes also reveal key information about relationships,
Stu: since they enable us to see how mood and behavior change as characters come or go.
Stu: When a new character arrives after a scene has begun, a friendly gathering may
Stu: turn hostile, and when a character departs before the scene ends,
Stu: professional meeting may suddenly turn romantic.
Stu: And you can see how that works here. So even the episode three, when Bryony leaves.
Stu: Jamie's presence after the fight and she has that moment at the coffee machine
Stu: her she lets her guard down and we see how affected she is by it and so that's
Stu: kind of it's not a french scene because we're not saying with jamie but that's
Stu: what makes the one kind of interesting right.
Chas: Is
Stu: It's got this combination of we're going to stay in this room.
Chas: And have.
Stu: A character come in and a character leave but also we're going to follow a character
Stu: like a relay and see where they go and.
Chas: Experience the environment differently yeah i mean
Chas: there were some of those relays in the first episode where particularly once
Chas: they get to the police station that really were one character
Chas: walks like across screen and the camera turns away
Chas: and we are now following a new character but
Chas: they've done so much excellent work in introducing us to who that character
Chas: is or what their role is and what their objective is that we're not lost when
Chas: we're in that movement and they've got several uh establishing of the geography
Chas: scenes early on in the police station as they're walking Jamie in, you know,
Chas: which rooms are locked, which ones are not, where they are in relation to the desk,
Chas: where the detectives are, where the family waiting room is on the other side of that locked door.
Chas: So they've done all this work so that...
Chas: We are, yes, they're French scenes, arguably. Some of them-
Stu: The big French scene example would be the interview at the very end,
Stu: where it is the lawyer, Jamie, Eddie, and the two detectives.
Stu: They reveal the footage, and then everyone leads except Eddie and Jamie,
Stu: and they have a moment together, and that's when you get the emotional event,
Stu: because that vulnerability and intimacy between them wouldn't happen with the
Stu: others in the room. Yeah.
Stu: The kind of handover stuff. Is it a French scene? Is it not?
Stu: No, but it's an interesting way of thinking about how to construct scenes.
Chas: Well, I think it gives the pace
Chas: to it because they're all in this physical location of the police station.
Chas: They're not all necessarily in the same room. So, you are moving from location
Chas: to location in combination of characters.
Chas: But the fact that you are suddenly following a character that you know who has
Chas: an objective, you know, it feels like a French scene.
Chas: And it increases that pacing and it feels effortless that we are,
Chas: while maintaining the immediacy of the one-er, we're suddenly in a new scene
Chas: with entirely new characters in an entirely new location.
Stu: And I think what is great about, I mean, I call them handovers.
Stu: I think that's where I picked it up doing Steadicam stuff.
Stu: What's cool about the handover and I think the useful technique for writers
Stu: on a micro level is you actually are asking who is the point of view character going into this scene.
Stu: Right. And one of the choices that they're having to make with these one is,
Stu: is who is the POV character for the scene?
Stu: Who is the protagonist of the scene is not necessarily the same as the point of view character.
Stu: Right. And I think, you know, you coming full circle to the,
Stu: the scene where Jamie is getting strip searched that they have chosen the point
Stu: of view character to be Eddie.
Stu: Right. I think there could be an interesting shift where the handover gets us
Stu: in there with point of view character A, to me character B, but character A leaves.
Stu: And that's kind of why it's a French scene. That definitely happens in episode
Stu: three when we see Jamie, there's like a guard walks down to Jamie's room and
Stu: then we see Jamie and then the guard leaves and we're just with Jamie.
Stu: And it's just a way to get us to Jamie. But that is kind of like a French scene
Stu: in a way, I think, in the way that you're kind of talking about, right?
Chas: Yeah. Well, what I'm talking about is how have they solved a pacing problem
Chas: with a oner with moving from one scene to the next if they don't want necessarily
Chas: a character from the previous scene or all the characters from a previous scene in the next scene.
Chas: And they've done it through establishing of geography, establishing of characters,
Chas: and then incredibly well-timed, well-rehearsed handovers.
Stu: Yeah, yeah.
Chas: But, I mean, one of the most enjoyable Draft Zero episodes we've ever done was
Chas: actually one we did looking at pilots and talking about the difference between
Chas: literary and dramatic techniques.
Chas: And the wanna is a literary,
Chas: technique right the the characters in the in the show don't know that they're
Chas: in they're being revealed to an audience in a wanna right but.
Stu: I actually think in a way it's a dramatic technique because the character's
Stu: experience of a scene should be in real time.
Chas: Unedited it's it's it's aligning us but they
Chas: are not this is i think this is you know going
Chas: back to julian's question both on sound design and on how
Chas: do they stop the character becoming a protagonist is they
Chas: haven't relinquished dramatic tools like
Chas: this is not no feeling like cinema verite where
Chas: it's trying to be like a documentary it doesn't feel altman-esque
Chas: right we're very clear on who the camera
Chas: is supposed to be on when it's all very precise
Chas: and you felt that more than
Chas: i did in the in you know sort of aesthetically in coverage reasons but then
Chas: there are moments you know the drone shot And there's sound design moments where
Chas: you've talked about they would have been really conscious of making sure that
Chas: they're capturing a whole lot of real in-world sound design.
Chas: But I was interested at the moments where they put us into the perspective of
Chas: one of the characters, particularly Eddie when he was really upset in the hardware
Chas: store, everything becomes muffled.
Chas: And it's just putting us in his it's it's
Chas: it's they're still using dramatic techniques
Chas: over narrative ones they're not forgetting ever that this is a show i mean the
Chas: the only point in the whole four episodes where i actually got annoyed at the
Chas: camera work was the opening of episode four where it opens in the shed,
Chas: and Eddie opens the shed and then the camera seemingly goes through a wall as it leaves with Eddie.
Chas: And it was drawing my attention to the camera work in a way that I didn't feel was serving the story.
Stu: Coming back, because while you've been talking, I haven't been paying attention,
Stu: I've just been watching the scene.
Stu: And this is a good example. So it is the midpoint. The strip search is kind
Stu: of the midpoint. So, we're, and you're seeing with the lawyers,
Stu: the lawyer and the detectives, right? So, Jamie's lawyer and the two detectives.
Stu: The detectives leave and they're kind of talking with each other, right? And then a...
Stu: The officer, the plainclothes officer, which had taken Jamie's,
Stu: had kind of done the record keeping with Jamie, the admin, right,
Stu: basically walks past frame, walks to Eddie, and then does a.
Stu: Escorts Eddie to the room with the nurse, right? And then Jamie comes in.
Stu: And, yeah, I mean, it just kind of, I just looked at him and went,
Stu: yeah, my feeling was that they made the decision to have the point of view,
Stu: and then the guard leaves.
Stu: So the point of view character of that scene
Stu: of jamie being strip searched is eddie and they have made that decision and
Stu: they've worked backwards in terms of how to make that it um i
Stu: mean it makes sense for an admin that the admin cop goes and
Stu: gets eddie and walks into where he needs to be but
Stu: it kind of does the connective tissue and i think it would be
Stu: an interesting exercise for your scripts like i'm looking at it now going huh
Stu: i can there's some scenes where i would be interested in writing the connective
Stu: tissue even if i know we're going to cut it just so I understand who it is that
Stu: is the point of view character, how are we getting in there?
Stu: It's kind of like an interesting exercise and it's the kind of like off-script
Stu: improvisation that you could do, right, as well.
Stu: Like from a directorial technique, we're coming into this scene,
Stu: we've actually cut out the connective tissue, right?
Stu: So there's a version of this where they don't see Eddie being escorted in and
Stu: they just cut to him being there, But there is something in him being led there,
Stu: led into the back room that kind of does stuff for his mentality and him being
Stu: confronted with the room and the nurse and all that kind of stuff that you could
Stu: kind of work in either improvisationally or just write in order to cut.
Chas: Are we at the end?
Chas: Have we got any other micro techniques you want to draw out?
Stu: In the absence of.
Chas: Us- In the absence of us actually having the scripts.
Stu: The POV question of the scene, like who is the point of view character of the
Stu: scene, actually helps inform the dramatic question of the scenes, right?
Stu: And in this case, they're very clear because it is what is the impact of these.
Stu: Like, if an underlining or running question of this show is what is the impact
Stu: of these events and these people, then having Eddie being the one that watches
Stu: Jamie makes sense, right?
Stu: Because this scene is about what is the impact of this scene on the character.
Stu: And I actually think you can ask yourself that question of every scene,
Stu: what character is most impacted by the events of this scene,
Stu: right? And then that becomes your point of view character.
Chas: Right?
Stu: And then, you know, there is a version of that where, well, what if we just hang on their face?
Stu: Right? But I think that is a really interesting reverse way of thinking about
Stu: it, using a tool for melodrama.
Stu: You know, I'm just thinking about it in terms of our work and going,
Stu: you know, what is the impact of this event on this character? Right?
Chas: I think back to most recent script and there was a character beat that repeatedly,
Chas: we understood it, but a lot of people reading the work were like,
Chas: I just can't quite get across with this character beat, a decision that they
Chas: make or a response that they make to a very heightened situation.
Chas: And what we ended up the the solve actually was to spend time with the character
Chas: sitting emotionally in their experience.
Stu: Potentially as a wanna yeah i think
Stu: we kind of came up with it after doing our own episode right where we're like
Stu: oh what if this is the uh what if this is the solve literally spend real time
Stu: with them and play around with the audio and and all that kind of stuff um yeah
Stu: i mean because that is a scene about the impact of that event on that character well.
Chas: I mean i would say that's not what the scene is about but we had to answer that
Chas: question so that people would go along with.
Stu: You know what.
Chas: What happens next.
Stu: Yeah we.
Chas: Ended up using a character question to resolve a plot issue.
Stu: I guess we're already kind of now into learnings i think the The incomplete
Stu: thing is definitely a really good learning that kind of restricting your point
Stu: of view does mean that it can leave some things incomplete.
Stu: And the success of this show has shown you, has shown that, you know,
Stu: not everything needs an answer.
Stu: And in fact, if you want people to talk about it, maybe it being,
Stu: there being space for questions from the audience is really useful.
Stu: But I do think an aspect of the incompleteness is that there are these characters that you meet,
Stu: for one episode that you feel like you go on a journey with.
Stu: So I feel like you're getting, you're kind of seeing a little bit of Jade's life.
Chas: Right?
Stu: She's a character which has given, you know, kind of become- we come back to her, right?
Stu: So we see her in being interviewed by the cops, she leaves, but then we come
Stu: back with her, learn about her relationship with the victim,
Stu: um, Katie, and- and then we kind of leave with her at the end, right?
Stu: Which I think is a powerful choice that they come back to her and make her part
Stu: of the wrap-up of the story in the way that when the detective and Adam connect,
Stu: we see her kind of being visibly ostracized and affected, and we just leave her there.
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: But same with Bryony, right? Like, we never come back to that character.
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: Right? And it's kind of like, it is incomplete. I like that word.
Chas: Mm-hmm.
Stu: Allowing things to be incomplete, because it's not saying it's,
Stu: hmm, unresolved is not the right word. It's like you've built some of the road
Stu: there, but you don't have to kind of come to a conclusion.
Chas: Yeah, I think it's coming back to me to the power of what questions like it's clear.
Chas: What makes this so successful on a writing level for me is hopefully this episode
Chas: has made it clear that the writers on a macro and a micro level are so in control
Chas: of the questions they want their audience to be asking at any given time.
Chas: Do they want them to be asking plot questions? Do they want them to be asking
Chas: character questions? Do they want them to be asking thematic questions?
Chas: And they've put in the massive amounts of work such that the stuff that feels...
Chas: I don't actually think the 101, it's powerful and it's pulled off really well.
Chas: I don't think that's the marvel of this show. I think it's a tool that is in
Chas: service of what is incredibly...
Chas: Well executed in this show which is how it's pulled
Chas: off unity in time and and what it's what that has allowed them to do in relation
Chas: to characters but i'm gonna i think forever be using this as well episode one
Chas: of this is a crime police procedural where actually none of the characters are
Chas: trying to figure out who done it.
Stu: What are you gonna be using that for you're gonna be constantly.
Chas: I don't know just just when people start talking about like oh why are people
Chas: not more active what are they trying to do and like you know it's more about i.
Stu: Mean i mean we just mentioned it the many times because it's obviously a very
Stu: powerful same scene eddie watching his son.
Chas: Being strapped.
Stu: To it eddie what can eddie do what is the plot of that scene i mean i guess are they going to find.
Chas: Evidence is the plot question.
Stu: Right but it's not told from the.
Chas: Detective's point.
Stu: Of view it is not told from jamie's.
Chas: Point of.
Stu: View the two people that are actually immediately affected.
Chas: By the.
Stu: You know, who asked the question and plot and then it's actually played on, on, on Eddie.
Stu: Right. So I think it, it kind of hopefully empowers people to do kind of a storytelling
Stu: that isn't, uh, and I love plot driven stuff, but.
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: You know, I loved Jack Reacher season three, smashed it like fucking three episodes
Stu: a night up way too late, got through it, but I'm not talking about it in the
Stu: same, I'm not like, We got to do an episode. Right.
Stu: And, and as much as I love the writing in that, it ain't, it ain't doing what this is doing.
Chas: So I, I think, I think this just gives me a language and an example to talk about.
Chas: How you can be in an almost plot absent scene and even episode, but have it feel tense.
Chas: The absence of plot does not mean the absence of tension.
Stu: That's something we should explore further. Because we've talked about tension being point of view.
Stu: So point of view driven, and this is tension that is, I mean,
Stu: it's about from restricted point of view.
Chas: But they're not shifting narrative point of view a lot.
Stu: No. And in fact, they're doing the very melodramatic thing of staying very inside
Stu: a very tight point of view.
Stu: Yes. My last observation is I, you know, the kind of, when I realized that every
Stu: episode had an emotional event, I went, we looked at that at a scene level, right?
Stu: But, you know, it's kind of interesting to think about it on a macro level.
Stu: Emotional event of an episode, emotional event of an act or a sequence and of the whole show, right?
Stu: I think is something we, it's probably actually worth coming back to in the
Stu: same way that we took sequence questions and then looked at them on a scene level.
Stu: Right. It's kind of might be interesting to do emotional events the other way
Stu: and kind of look at large, using emotional events as a larger structuring tool.
Chas: I mean, I would love to dig in
Chas: more to emotional events. That was a really eye-opening and great episode.
Stu: Cool.
Chas: But yeah.
Stu: I'm back.
Chas: Thank you, Stu, for making this happen. he's
Chas: back and thank you again to
Chas: our amazing patrons who bring you more draft zero and more often and i
Chas: know that's like a sort of trite line that i chop out but honestly like if it
Chas: wasn't for these guys supporting us we would not get through the vague goal
Chas: of 10 episodes a year uh it really does inspire us and keep us going do.
Stu: People really want,
Stu: Do people want 10? Maybe it's a negative sell. People don't want 10 episodes.
Stu: They're like, man, just give me a limited season of four episodes.
Chas: But if you want to help us choose our topics and our homework and throw questions
Chas: and observations at us, yeah, please do join.
Chas: And thanks to our extra special patrons, Alexandra, Jen, Jesse,
Chas: Krob, Lily, Malay, Paolo, Randy, Sandra, Thees, and Thomas.
Stu: Was Crob on that list? Is he doing anything?
Chas: Well done, Crob, for finishing principal photography on your debut feature film.
FX: I hope you all feel like arguing with either Stu or myself about anything on
FX: this episode or anything in general.
FX: And you can find many ways of getting in touch with us at our website at draft-zero.com.
FX: At the website, you'll also find the show notes for this and all our other episodes,
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FX: Thanks. And thanks for listening.