This message comes from today's Open Book with Jenna podcast. Each week, Jenna Bush-Hager is joined by

celebrities, experts, best-selling authors, and friends who share candid stories and exciting new

projects. Search Open Book with Jenna to follow now. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross.

Our guest, British actor Stephen Graham, stars are not one but two new shows.

Hulu's A Thousand Blows and the Netflix miniseries Adolescence. He spoke with fresh air producer Sam Brigger.

Here's Sam.

In the historical drama A Thousand Blows, Stephen Graham plays a bare-knuckle boxer in Victorian London, prone to rage and more likely to beat you up than have a conversation with you. The show was created by Stephen Knight, who also created Peaky Blinders, something you may have caught Stephen Graham in in its final season, playing the character of Union Man, Hayden Stagg. The other show that Stephen Graham is in

is adolescence, one he co-created. It's a four-part miniseries following what happens to a family

when their 13-year-old son is arrested for murdering her girl from his school. It's a devastating show,

very difficult to watch and very difficult to stop watching. Graham plays the father Eddie, trying his best to be a good parent, but maybe not doing enough.

Adolescence as a show is not interested so much in who is guilty, but why do these kinds of things happen?

Is it the family's fault? Is it bullying?

Is it part of a kind of toxic masculinity young boys can find on social media while they're sitting alone, supposedly safe, in their own bedrooms?

The show is remarkable in many ways, but one of them is technical. Each episode is a one take. There are no edits. The camera is turned on at the beginning of the episode and

turned off at the end. They're like plays, but moving throughout different locations and scenes.

It adds an urgency to the drama. You may have first seen Stephen Graham in the Guy Ritchie

movie Snatch, playing the role of Tommy, Jason Statham's sidekick. His breakout role was playing

combo, a white nationalist skinhead, and this is England. He's been in lots of other movies

and TV shows, but some recent memorable ones were his portrayal of Al Capone in Broadway Empire,

and as a mafia and union head in Martin Scorsese's movie The Irishman, where he steals some

scenes from no less an actor

than Al Pacino himself. Before we start talking, let's hear a scene from adolescence. This is from

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