When it comes to television shows about murder investigations, sometimes it feels like everything has been done… but not everything, says streaming columnist NICK OVERALL.

The scramble to churn out as much content as possible in this streaming era means crime series have become so prolific that it’s now exhausting – even for aficionados.

I’ve often found myself skipping over the latest big-budget murder shows that are splattered across my subscriptions. A glance at the gloomy trailer or a skim read of its description full of words like “gritty, absorbing and procedural” are enough to keep me scrolling. Been there, done that.

However, a new drama miniseries called Adolescence that’s just landed on Netflix has changed the game.

This four-part show from Britain offers a fascinating and undeniably disturbing premise that’s backed up by a stellar cast who bring it to life.

The subject of this show isn’t the usual notorious serial killer or a scorned wife out for revenge, but rather a 13-year-old boy.

The show opens with police storming the house of the Miller family, taking a young teen named Jamie into custody for the apparent murder of his classmate Katie.

Did he do it? And if so why? These are the questions his parents torture themselves with as the disturbing plot unravels.

In a figurative sense you could consider Jamie’s father Eddie (played by co-creator Stephen Graham) to be something of the show’s detective in his search for answers.

He desperately searches through his son’s past and his own to find some kind of understanding of what could have led to this. His “investigation” takes him deep into a world alien to him, the world of the internet and social media that his son grew up in but one that Eddie himself can never quite understand.

Graham, who many will know from Peaky Blinders, says the inspiration for the show came from similarly horrific issues he was seeing in real life.

“I remember thinking ‘What’s happening? What’s going on with society for this to be happening?’,” he said in an interview with The Los Angeles Times.

“It’s harrowing for us as a nation and as a society to digest. I had this idea about wanting to bring that issue into the social consciousness with the format and the style of the one-shot.”

A special mention needs to be given to young actor Owen Cooper who plays the disturbed and distressed teenager at the centre of the show.

The drama that unfolds hinges on his ability to sell it and for a 15-year-old he does a remarkable job. Even more intriguing is that this is his acting debut.

It’s not just the writing of Adolescence that is such an achievement but also what it pulls off on a technical level.

Each of the four episodes are all shot in one continuous take, which charges the show with a relentless tension that makes it hard to look away. The feeling is one that’s often more like a stage show rather than a television show. Characters enter and exit scenes with such precision its easy to forget the program is a work of fiction. It must have taken an immense amount of work and rehearsals to pull it off and it’s well worth it.

What also helps the plot feel so fast-paced is the show’s commitment to telling its story over just four episodes. So many crime series these days feel so eager to stretch out their plot for as long as they can, stuffing it with so many red herrings that it becomes exhausting.

The stripped down focus on the core concept at hand in this crime show means there’s never a dull moment.

Many are already going as far as to call Adolescence a masterpiece and it’s for very good reason. It’s a compelling, creepy and all-too-real drama series and a major achievement for Netflix.