"Euphoria" — a Show About Drugs That Is Actually About Not Being Heard

We all live on compromises: you put up with what you don't like, because there'll always be somebody out there ready to wreck it anyway. On one hand those jolts are necessary, or you'll set solid inside a world of your own invention; on the other they're hard to come back from. It hurts to realise someone doesn't understand you and isn't about to.

And it's still desperately important to keep pushing toward the conversation, or we'll all end up a collection of scattered squares — apparently well matched, and forever catching on each other's corners.

Contemporary television seems to have grasped this and started taking on the sorest subjects available. Without looking further you'd think Sam Levinson's "Euphoria" was about drugs; it's about the failure of understanding between people who are close. Something in the parents-and-children arrangement stops them developing and moving on.

And of course, as they get down to something deeper, the characters keep arriving at the understanding that things are far from all right and that they'll have to act rather than wait for help. That conflict is exactly where a teenager's worst mistakes come from — set into their behaviour because one day a parent couldn't find the strength to talk about the simplest things.

There it is: the portrait of the modern person who prefers a screen to being in the room. The result is fear, depression, and drugs as a temporary way out of problems that will still leave damage no pill covers. It takes real courage to deal with yourself; finding the mistakes is only the first move, and you still have to learn to correct them, before it's too late.

I think "Euphoria" is one of those things everybody should see, particularly as it's far from boring and genuinely beautiful — it has you from the first frame, and the rhythm never lets you settle. Which is as it should be: we need to talk to each other rather than sit in silence.