Adolescence with Aaron May and David Ridley

For my second of three consecutive duo interviews, I chat with composers Aaron May and David Ridley. While they've been composing together for a while, their biggest project is also their most recent - the viral Netflix series Adolescence, from director Philip Barantini and starring Stephen Graham. It's not surprise, then, that we spend a lot of our chat talking about the series, including working in the single take, real time format, understanding that the series might not need score at all, and the genesis of the child vocalization that forms an integral part of their score's palette. Dave has also scored all of Phil's projects, with Aaron also scoring all but the first two, so we discuss this long term director combination as well as how the two work together (and work separately). This is one of the more tangential conversations I've had - Aaron and Dave warned me beforehand that it might happen, but I certainly instigated it! I should have known it was coming when we lost track of time before recording talking about East Anglia and the British ritual/folk year. Shame that wasn't recorded too... Aaron and Dave's score is available on all major platforms, as are their other scores and their debut solo albums (each released in 2023). Adolescence is currently on Netflix, and there are rumors that a second season may come (though this would at least be a surprise to me). You can find out more about Aaron and Dave on their joint website .

You can listen to Adolescence with Aaron May and David Ridley online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Adolescence with Aaron May and David Ridley is an episode from The Film Scorer by Nicholas Marcus.

This episode is 41:55 long.

This episode was published on Apr 20, 2025.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from The Film Scorer when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.