Stephen Graham has spoken about the possibility of another season of Adolescence in a shock U-turn from the star of the hit Netflix show.
Graham, who co-created the show with Jack Thorne, was interviewed by Variety alongside his wife, Hannah Walters, when he opened up about the possibility of a second season.
Jack Thorne and others attached to the show have been adamant so far that there will not be a season two of the series.
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Adolescence, where every episode is shot in one single long take, focuses on a young boy arrested on suspicion of stabbing a young girl to death.
The show was a critical success, with 100 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes and viewers raving about it.
However, this hasn’t stopped Netflix from canning shows in the past, with Kaos, Mindhunter, and Glow all being canned despite glowing critical reviews.
When deciding on a follow up of a series, traditionally Netflix has been all about the numbers, whether that be the obvious ones like how many viewers watched it, or the less obvious ones like how many viewers finished it or went on to watch other shows.
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This, you would imagine, is not likely to be an issue for Adolescence.
The series has been a huge hit for the streaming platform, breaking records by becoming the first ever streaming show to top the UK’s TV weekly charts and the highest recorded weekly viewing figures of any streaming show in the UK.
When all is said and done, Adolescence is likely to be one of Netflix’s most watched English-speaking series of all time.
So it should not come as a shock then that Graham seems open to the idea of a second season.
The actor and co-writer of the show joked in the interview with Variety when asked about season two that they will ‘see how the figures are’.
He went on to add, however: “But yeah, there’s the possibility of developing another story.”
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Walters, who has a cameo in the show and runs a production company with Graham that produced the show, said: “A prequel to Adolescence, that’s certainly not going to happen.
“But there’s so much mileage in the one-shot and so much mileage in investing into human nature again and looking at something else.
“But yeah, everything’s looking good … everyone’s happy, shall we say?”
This comes as a shock as the show’s co-creator Jack Thorne previously shut down the idea of a second season.
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In an interview on ITV's This Morning, Thorne was asked about the possibility of another story, possibly focusing on Katie, and said (via The Independent): “I don’t think we’re the right people to tell Katie’s story.
“I think there are other makers out there that could tell beautiful dramas about Katie or girls like Katie, and that those shows should be made.
“Our aim was to try and tell Jamie’s story as fully as we possibly could, and maybe trying to tell her story would dilute that in some way and maybe we would be inadequate for that task.”
He also said more generally: “Jamie’s story is finished… I don’t think there’s anywhere more we can take Jamie, so I don’t think there is a series two.
“We’d love to explore the one shot format in another way. We’d love to tell other stories with it, but I don’t think a series two of Adolescence is quite right for us.”
Topics: Adolescence, Stephen Graham, Netflix, TV and Film, TV
Michael Slavin