International Insider: Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’ In Spotlight

Welcome back, Insiders. Jesse Whittock here taking you back over the week Netflix one-shotted its way to a TV hit and Asian film buyers decamped in Hong Kong. Sign up for the newsletter here.

‘Adolescence‘ Is Not Just For Teens

Grown-up TV: If such an award existed, Netflix would have taken home last year’s crown for word-of-mouth TV hit of the year for Richard Gadd’s Baby Reindeer. It may only be March, but the streamer looks to have repeated the trick in 2025. Adolescence, the four-part drama starring Stephen Graham and breakout teenager Owen Cooper, has topped the streamer’s charts in 71 countries after launching on March 13, while amassing a flawless set of reviews. The show has currently got a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 98%/9.2 out of 10, ranking it among the best television shows of this century. As Katie Campione wrote Tuesday, it was watched 24.3 million times around the world over its first few days. That number will no doubt grow again next week. The story centers around a 13-year-old, who is arrested for the murder of a female classmate. Themes of family, cyber bullying and incel culture are interwoven and the show has been widely praised for each episode being filmed in one continuous shot. Last month, Max sat down with writer Jack Thorne and director Philip Barantini to talk about making a show where “the camera doesn’t blink.” The number of takes each episode took were revealed on social media this week, with the conclusion taking a whopping 16 tries before Barantini was happy. Following Adolescence‘s slick launch, Jake picked up the baton and returned to hear more from the prolific Thorne, who has basically written every series you’ve ever watched (almost). The chat is full of spoilers, so I urge you to watch the series before reading. I can say Thorne – who had just returned to London from the BBC Breakfast studio in Manchester, where he’d been talking about the show’s impact – addresses several burning questions and recalls being spellbound by the Hollywood looks of Brad Pitt, who is an executive producer on Adolescence via his Plan B Entertainment label. Thorne also addressed the ongoing crisis in UK TV drama funding, backing calls for a streamer levy and government help to kickstart the industry. He warned the “devastating” funding situation, where British broadcasters have become extraordinarily reliant on international investment, was denying new writing talent a route into the industry and even impacting more established names. This week the national newspapers in the UK started covering the crisis, but our UK-based team has been well ahead of that curve, reporting on it in depth several times last year and through 2025.

The ABCs Of CJ ENM

“Globalizing” K-content: CJ ENM boss Yoon Sang-hyun doesn’t speak to the press much, but Sara Merican tracked him down for an exclusive one-on-one in which he revealed the South Korean company was upping a previously-announced $750M content spend to $818M for 2025. The CEO of the Parasite, Snowpiercer and Queen of Tears studio addressed topics such as CJ’s partnership with Warner Bros Discovery, investment in Fifth Season and a possible re-entry into the Chinese market. “We’ve made ongoing efforts toward global expansion in the past, but up until now, a lot of that has been focused on exporting Korean films and dramas overseas,” Yoon told Sara. “What we’re aiming for now is something more structural.” The interview came ahead of Hong Kong’s Filmart, where Sara and Liz Shackleton were on the ground, delivering a heap of exclusives and stories from the panels and the conference halls. You can find their extensive coverage here.

Hillary Clinton At Cinema For Peace Forum

“No peace without justice”: In what’s been another wild week for U.S. and world politics, Mel whizzed over to Germany to hear from former U.S. Secretary of State and Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who was talking at Berlin’s Cinema for Peace World Forum. President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin appear close to a Ukraine War ceasefire agreement, but Clinton – who Trump still bitterly labels ‘Crooked Hillary’ after their close 2016 election battle – warned no real solution could be achieved without “justice… peace… and every effort undertaken to end the impunity of those who ordered this invasion and those who perpetuated the killings and the war crime.” She was speaking during a Q&A for Laura Warner’s Ukrainian war crimes doc The Cranes Call at the German capital’s French embassy. The film documents Russian war crimes. HiddenLight Productions, the unscripted company Clinton co-founded in 2020 with her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, and Sam Branston, led production on The Cranes Call. “We try to tell stories that really go to the heart of what’s actually happening in the world today,” said Clinton. Cinema for Peace World Forum ended Wednesday.  

Finland’s ‘White Lotus’

Globie: Zac brought us our latest Global Breakouts report, this time from the world of Finnish TV, which is increasingly building its reputation on the international stage. Supporting Actor, a record-breaking hit for commercial broadcaster Nelonen, follows an actor plagued by an inability to land leading roles. After visiting a fortune teller, he believes he is cursed and sets about breaking his hoodoo. Max Malka, producer at Supporting Actor maker Banijay Finland, half-jokingly calls the show the “Finnish White Lotus,” given they both have auteur-driven writer-directors. In this case, that creative force is Niklas Lindgren, known for the series Idiomatic and 2022 feature Bad Women. “I originally just wanted to write about and explore ideas of success,” Lindgren tells Deadline from his studio in Helsinki. More here.

The Fjord Assembly Line