Slough, England:

Those of you who ask for a quick, easily digestible thriller, such as jack knife with the speed of light and flood with mind-bending conspiracy theories, advised to give a very wide quay to Netflix’s sober British Hitshow, Youth.

If, on the other hand, you rather enjoy being immobilized on the couch with your heart torn out and stare at the wall long after the credits are rolled in oblivion, Youth is your cup of tea. Although we must warn you at this point that there is unlikely that there will be some cups of tea. Any hot drinks you may have lovingly prepared will be left to get cold on the arm of your couch when you are tied in the horror of what happens when we let teens have unbound access to social media.

Divided into four hours long episodes and written by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham, Youth Is the kick up back that all parents need before they are caving for child-led suggestions involving the words “Instagram account” and “but all other people’s parents …”

The probability balance indicates that not any boy with a social media account will corrode to an uncertain, self -defending, women -hating murderous psychopath like Youth Jamie Miller. But like Youth hurts to illustrate, starting the radioactive experiment that gives a child a computer and noise -canceling headphones is akin to sticking a wet finger in a vibrant outlet just to see what’s happening. Should we really tempt fate and let our sons venture into a digital cocoon dominated by like Andrew Tate’s manosphere? Unless you are the Tate yourself reading this, it is unlikely that you need the answer described.

A fly on the wall

We open with the police beating down the door of a suburbs family as they arrest their thirteen -year -old son, Jamie (played to perfection of fifteen -year -old Owen Cooper in his first role ever), on suspicion of the murder of a schoolmate.

The word ‘suspicion’ is used very loosely here as Jamie was careless enough to perform his rage-induced stabbing in a parking space in the full view of a well-placed CCTV camera. Whatever action-packed opening that can lead to thriller lovers to believe, there is no Dybefake Association that is in waiting. Despite Jamie’s weak protests against the opposite – like a child who insists that they did not eat that cupcake despite cutting their cheeks into chocolate frosting – we are very quickly discovering that there is no doubt about Jamie’s fault. This is not a whodunnit. This is not even a howdunnit. This is a Whoydunnit.

Director Philip Barantini chose to shoot Youth in a trouble -free roof. While this means it is very difficult to get all aspects of the demand for murder – for example, we do not have time to pay tribute to the murder victim’s family – this is the closest you will ever be a fly on the wall in a murder examination. (A gentle caution: If you are currently fighting for headaches, keep watching this show until painkillers have kicked in. The camera will never rest, ever and you will be forced to hold an ice pack to your spindle if you carelessly proceed in your weakened state.)

With this camera, we then follow Jamie into the police station as he reads his rights and awarded a lawyer in which the boy chose his father (played by the flawless Stephen Graham) to act as his ‘appropriate adult’. We track the camera into the room where Jamie’s parents and older sisters are held, and cling to the heartfelt belief that their son could not have played any role in this hell nightmare. Their raw horror is scraped in plain views and you can almost believe that you are watching a documentary instead of a scripted show. The use of a soundtrack is kept to the barest of the minimum. Almost against our will, we are drawn into the same fresh hell as Jamie’s family and we cannot look away. Before the end of the episode, we are confronted – along with Jamie’s father Eddie and his lawyer – with damn evidence that no one can deny. Unfiltered anguish for the loss of innocence and the son he will never regain stealing on Eddie’s face when he collapses into a grief.

A haunting lesson

Through the four episodes, a thing is obviously missing: the murder victim, Katie’s, family. As Barantini discovered when you shoot with a fly-up-wall-a-take camera, you don’t have the luxury of time to explore every tentacle of a crime like Jamies. But this is not Katie’s story, nor the haunted, uneven emptiness of her family.

No, this is Jamie’s story. More specifically, this is the story of how young boys’ minds are cast as they are exposed online to pornography and masculine ideals, leaving poorly equipped for neither the port’s empathy or dealing with rejection. As Margaret Atwood so much observed in an essay collection, men are afraid that women are laughing at them and women are afraid that men will kill them. This is at the heart of Jamie’s motive: At the end of the day he couldn’t bear that a girl he pursued could mock him.

There are no deep, dark secrets lurking in the shadows of Jamie’s family life. There is no alcoholic mother, no absent father, no sub-surface abuse in the undercurrents. Jamie is the product of a happy, loving family whose only crime was to give him a smartphone and say yes when he asked for a computer in his room. As we – along with his psychologist – Discover, before submitting to his murderous impulses in the light of rejection, Jamie spent many night healing the entire screen and locked away in his digital world where his headphones sealed the outside world away. Where children once had the works of JK Rowling and Rick Riordan to keep them company before they slept, boys like Jamie spent their nights bombarded with subliminal messages of toxic masculinity on social media.

The destruction Jamie’s crime in its wake does not leave anyone – least of all his family. More than a year we see the grief that anchors them down as they try to navigate life with the haunting knowledge that they are not guilty. A little while they will admit it, Jamie’s parents accept that their hands-off approach to Gadgets played a hand in the endless killer that their son became. Jamie is the villain, but falling prey, as he did with masculine ideals, he is also a victim. Like his father, Eddie, cried into Jamie’s teddy bear with the desire he could have done better, even we succumb to tears. Because we know that when our boys succumb to invisible pressure, the line between us and Eddie is whisker.

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