Its been quite a long time since I have seen a series (or indeed a film) that was quite a powerful as this was - so powerful in fact that a maximum of two episodes was all I could or wanted to watch at one sitting. Depressingly salutary to show how minor aggressions can build into something that becomes impassable. And also how communication can be, literally, the difference between life and death. If words/ actions/decisions had been made then how different might things have been.
The cast, if not of the right age (how often though, do we ever see a high school series with age-relevant casting!) were very fine indeed. The acting was often subtle and the close-up’s particularly in the final harrowing account of Hannah’s last moments was particularly powerful - and simple.
And that scene - it was re-edited so that there were many details that we did not see - and having seen the unedited, original scene I can, sort of, understand why. It was horribly explicit - not just from what we sure, but the whole process and I can understand why they did edit it. But…
The structure was sophisticated and one needed to keep one’s wits about oneself. While it might have been an apparently simple structure - each episode/side of a tape was Hannah's account of how one person contributed to her final decision - there were scenes that were shorter or truncated as other people in that scene were not the main focus, so it was only at the end, particularly in the final few episodes that we got the full picture of central events - the two parties and the horrors that occurred at them.
It will be interesting to see how the second series comes across - essentially the trail/inquest into Hannah’s death.