Adolescence

I'm struggling with what to rate this one to be honest, on one hand it is just objectively a great piece of television. The acting is and the cinematography is amazing. The writing is great as well but I'm struggling to decide if what has been written is the best way to tell this story. As a society we are fascinated with killers and as of late I think a lot more people have decided to take a step back from this fascination to focus on the victims instead. This series however completely fails to deliver on this, it feeds into the obsession the question in the first episode of if he did it or not followed by our growing need to know why he did it. While watching I couldn't help but find myself feeling sympathetic for Jamie, not that that's a bad thing but he isn't the victim in this story. They chose not to focus on Katie and I think that leads the stories shortcomings, the way the story was told led me to feeling more sympathy for her murderer than her because we never got to know her as the audience. Maybe the interpretation I'm meant to leave with is just that, the fact that in real life we often get too caught up with the killers than their victims but I don't really think that's what the creators intended. I just think they failed. We don't get to know about Jade and her friendship with Katie, we don't see Katie's parents. I almost wish we had this series in two halves with one side being Jamie's and one being Katie's but maybe that would trivialise things too much. I just don't think this is as poignant as it should have been towards Katie's murder and only went on to sensationalise the horrific treatment of young girls.