That last sentence could very well describe Made In Britain, too. The 1982 TV film, which was written by David Leland and directed by Alan Clarke (running as part of the latter’s “Tales Out Of School” series for the BBC), also offers a disturbing, unflinching look at a violent young man of his time, a 16-year-old skinhead named Trevor (Tim Roth, in his onscreen debut) who was thrown into an assessment center after vandalizing the house of a Pakistani man. And much like Graham’s inspiration to create Adolescence (a boy stabbing a girl to death), this one also tries to solve a disturbing modern puzzle (that of the rise of young white-power skinheads in the early ’80s)—or, at very least, shed light on it and dig into it beyond the headlines.
We first meet Trevor in a close-up, the area between his eyes tattooed with a swastika, as he gets up to head to court, with the camera staying dead-set on his face in one of Made In Britain‘s several winding tracking shots through drabby hallways and The Exploited’s “UK 82” blasting along to his march. “You were a constant truant at school, a failure, it seems,” a bespectacled judge then informs Trevor stuffily. “You’ve been in court on numerous occasions for non-attendance. You have been convicted of taking and driving away, shoplifting, violent behavior, and, in spite of your undertaking to the court, you have made no attempts to secure yourself a job. And now you’ve been accused of stealing once again; and you’ve attacked a member of the immigrant community and caused damage to his property. It’s a long, depressing list. Are you not ashamed of yourself?” Without blinking an eye, Trevor matter-of-factly replies, “No,” as if that was the dumbest question in the world.
And over the next hour or so, we see Trevor smash another front window (this time of an employment center), kick the shit out of a cook, steal multiple cars, literally piss on his assessment file, and pull his Black roommate Errol (Terry Richards) into a lot of this madness just to fuck with him and for the fun of it. There is no learning curve or redemption here—and Trevor, who we’re reminded multiple times throughout the film is notably intelligent, doesn’t seem to want any, convinced that he’s one of the few who can see through all of society’s hypocrisy and bullshit. “No one cares about your little protest, Trevor,” explains the center’s deputy chief, Peter (Bill Stewart), who holds out hope for the teen when others give up. “No one gives a damn. It’s totally insignificant, just you in this horrible room.”
If Adolescence paints Jamie (Owen Cooper) as a sweet, confused kid at first—it’s worth noting that both works spend as good amount of time on the mundanity of processing—Made In Britain does seemingly the opposite, with Trevor never really wavering, even in the film’s final moments when he’s beaten by a guard and explained his fate. (Jamie—who, unlike Trevor, is a murderer—does give flashes of the skinhead’s rage, especially at the end of episode three when he’s dragged away from his last assessment session, which The A.V. Club‘s Saloni Gajjar discussed.) But perhaps Made In Britain‘s biggest revelation is Roth himself, who gives the kind of electric, in-your-face performance that rarely comes along. The fact that it’s tough to look away from this monster—and not see his anger resonating today, more than 40 years after the film debuted—is its own kind of disturbing.
