The End of the F***ing World

Channel 4's adaptation of Charles Forsman's 2013 graphic novel arrived in autumn 2017 as one of the most distinctive British dramas of the streaming era. Showrunner Charlie Covell, working with director Jonathan Entwistle (who had piloted the project as a student short three years earlier), translated Forsman's spare comic-book panels into eight twenty-two-minute episodes that feel closer to American indie cinema than to traditional UK drama. Channel 4 ran it first; Netflix picked up international distribution and ordered a second season for 2019.

The premise is bleak and the execution is precise. James (Alex Lawther) is a seventeen-year-old suburban schoolboy who has spent his childhood quietly cultivating the idea that he is a budding psychopath; Alyssa (Jessica Barden) is the furious, lonely classmate who decides, on no particular evidence, that he should be her boyfriend. The two leave home together. Frequent voiceover from both characters, deadpan static framings, and a soundtrack of Brenda Lee, Hank Williams, and Graham Coxon's original compositions give the series a tonal signature unlike anything else on British television. Lawther and Barden are extraordinary; the supporting work from Gemma Whelan and Naomi Ackie in season two is equally fine.

The series won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Drama Series in 2018 and a Peabody the same year, and was nominated across BAFTA Craft for editing, music, and direction. Its visual signature (sherbet-coloured interiors, long English motorway shots, the sustained discipline of a half-hour cable rhythm in a country that mostly makes hour-longs) has been imitated across British and American television since.