When I say this show is not like any other teen, or young adult, drama that's gone before I mean it. This show does something which sets it apart from others, in that it is not unwilling to perform a deep dive into the mental state of its characters, and bring it to the fore. While there are the usual YA tropes in the show (stress over academic performance, rebellion through parties, raves and drugs, dysfunctional family relationships), it deals with them with a competent respect to the mental deliberations that influence them, with a high quality for the understatement throughout the show, letting things develop without being overly brash or yearning to constantly be explosive.
Over the course of the six episodes, the focus does drift away from Jonny, whose grief and long-term battle with depression sets the stage in an impressive opening episode, onto other members of the main ensemble, with each having their personal and private lives explored one episode by one. While this does lead to certain characters perhaps feeling a little squeezed as the series reaches its conclusion, motivation is never wholly lost and the way in which their lives are displayed as being intrinsically interweaved with others means that there is little feeling that anything is being rushed or on screen for the sake of it.
The show isn't perfect, and does wobble in the penultimate two episodes as the series attempts to bring the themes that have run through it together in a way that is more obvious to the audience - without as subtle scripting of the grand narrative - yet the show treats its audience with respect in how it communicates the message. Never is it overly simplistic in some desperation for viewers to understand or interpret it, and the final episode simultaneously wraps up the six episodes' stories neatly while tantalisingly teasing at what might come.
Tell Me Everything presents a grown-up and shrewd depiction of mental health among young people, and the cognitive dissonance between its raw and brutal manifestations and the more quiet, complentative moments never gets too much that the show is achingly uneven. No character is ever completely a villain, nor completely squeaky-clean, which leads to the show becoming even more captivating and engrossing, to understand the nuances that take place into understanding why a character is behaving, and being treated by others, in such a way. Audiences may have an appetite for some characters to be punished for their actions more pointedly, yet they are introduced in a fashion that means we can understand and relate to them, rather than react in a knee-jerk way.
The creative decision for Jonny's scenes to be narrated by the character, and the way in which the character is on occassion surreally shown as alone in a packed environment, are written with aplomb, and are part of how the show displays Davies' intense, realistic, and believable skills as a performer. The other members of the ensemble portray their characters convincingly too; as someone who can relate to quite a few of the characters in the show, Jonny with mental health difficulties, Louis with social awkwardness, and Neve's push for academic greatness, their adeptness at inhabiting their characters come across even more exemplarily, and you find yourself wanting to spend a lot more time with the characters once the six episodes are up. The show does an excellent job at ending the series in a satisfying way, but with enough threads hanging to suggest an intense, and jam-packed, potential for another run. Whether or not it does enough to gain another series is up for questioning, given the arguably weak position ITVX and ITV2 are in trying to compete for eyeballs, but in no way has this series fallen into the trap of worrying about that.
