Welcome to it is a hit! In this series, IndieWire speaks with creators and showrunners behind some of our favorite TV shows at the moment they realized that their show broke big.
So many things can go wrong on a particular project. When they go right, it means that the responsible creators have made a series of decisions that support the story they want to tell. Netflix’s “teen” broke out much bigger than anyone ever expectedAnd ends by making 13 Primetime Emmy nominations.
Decision 1: Actors and producer Stephen Graham approached his often collaborator Jack Thorne (“The Virtues”, “Help”) to write the show.
Decision 2: Thorne convinced Graham to write it with him. “I’ve always thought he was an actor who had an author within him,” Thorne told IndieWire over Zoom. “He is instinctively a narrator. And so I wanted to find a way to use that side of his brain and use it. He is nervous to write, he is dyslexic, he sees himself as a writer, but I thought we could find a way to work together that would enable that side of his brain to flower.”
They met at Zoomar; When Graham and Thorne talked through things, Thorne completed dialogue and wrote the script in the computer.
Decision 3: They wrote the show to be shot in four episodes As a single tall takes. “I want this to be about knife crime,” Graham told Thorne, “and I want this to be in a single TA and four episodes.” During the writing process, Thorne realized that “The only thing changed how I write. I could see the joy of the incomplete. There, conventionally, I would tell a story was not possible. Writing this show I realized an injury to that rhythm. This kicked me halfway across the road, and I saw the traffic come to me.
Decision 4: With a fast approaching window to shoot the show, Graham and Thorne did something risky. Everything they had written was section 1. “I didn’t want to lose that window and I didn’t want the project to die,” Thorne said. “Let’s write sections 2 and 3 on Spec and and thankfully it paid us.”
Decision 5: Amazon, the original home of the series, didn’t want to do the show they wanted to do. So they went away. “We just didn’t fit what they wanted to do,” Thorne said.
Decision 6: This made it possible for the two creators to go to Netflix UK. Graham had played in Netflix the political series “Bodies”. They met Netflix in January 2024 and shot this summer. “Youth” launched production in July 2024 with Director Phil Barantini and Kinematographer Matthew LewisBoth had shot a one-ta-drama “boiling point” with Graham. “They knew how to do it,” Thorne said. “The difference was to Be a single room, and we didn’t make a single room. We threw cameras from trucks. One of my jobs was to write the impossible and let these technically brilliant people prepare ways to solve it, as it is always in the impossible that the interesting things happen. ”
Decision 7: They fixed section 3. The first episode filmed was the confrontation between the 13-year-old accused killer Jamie (Owen Cooper) and his psychologist (Erin Doherty). But Netflix had notes. “We had a rehearsal week, Tech Week and Shoot Week,” said Thorne. “Especially Thursday in Tech Week there will be many people watching take, because it would be a repetition for dressing for where we would go with it. And at that point all problems with the script would be obvious, and we would have to get into it, it would be to get in, which would then be for it, it was not a script. The room we hit the script, and it still felt overwhelming.
Decision 8: Netflix came behind it. The show was shown to content manager Bela Bajaria, who showed it to collaborate Sarandos. “They helped us position it so it had an international life,” Thorne said. “They were on it from the beginning, and they are passionate about it, and they felt they had something that people will want to see. But it is not to say that it was not a massive surprise. Since we thought we had not done a little show that might have any international interest, but we did not think it would do what it did, no one would ever go. A story that would work in America.
When the show was sent to Raves, Thorne started getting messages from old school friends, people who are not in the industry. “You became aware of how many people in different countries looked at it and had that answer,” Thorne said. “It is partly down to the only shot, and people were interested in the technical ability that Matt and Phil showed to do the show, and there is an element in fear of” What happens to my teenager behind a closed door? “But the main reason is that there was something about the performances that were special.
Next up: Thorne works with Sam Mende’s series about the Beatles. That’s all he can say. He also adapted William Golding’s “Lord of the Fluies”, directed by Mark London and filmed with 42 boys off the Malaysia coast.
All sections of “teens” are now flowing on Netflix.
