Even as the era of prestige TV shifts to a broader model of series development, there still seems to be room for smaller stories that are a little odd but have the potential to be fascinating. A British series that follows a teen who faces the outside world for the first time is something that we’re happy can still get made, even if no one is a spy or in a post-apocalyptic world

Opening Shot: The back of a young man’s head as he watches a movie on an old tube TV.

The Gist: As the teen, Danny (Lewis Gribben), watches an old movie in his boarded-up house, his father Steve (Rory Keenan) talks to his sister Sue (Lisa McGrillis) on the phone, and says “go in carefully.” He then drives home, puts on a motorcycle helmet and picks up a shotgun out of the trunk of his car and goes in. As far as Danny knows, his father was in the dangerous outside world fighting the monsters Steve has told him about since he was a kid.

Then, late that night, a shotgun blast rings out. Sue arrives at the house, looking for both Steve and Danny. Danny is putting on a record and dancing frantically; she has police bash down the door, and they bring the teen outside; Steve is dead in a nearby field, having killed himself.

What’s going on with Danny? When we go back and see 7-year-old Danny (Samuel Mckenna), we see what Steve does to protect him. He screams at the boy when he tries to go outside. He tells Danny that the world is full of monsters. Steve shoots squirrels, smears blood on his face, and makes like he’s been outside all day battling those monsters.

After some observation, Sue brings Danny home to live with her and her son Aaron (Samuel Bottomley). Also around is her boyfriend Paul (Johann Myers) and his kids. Aaron wants to know why he has to share a room with Danny, whom he thinks is a weirdo, but Sue tells him that his mental health is fragile and he just needs some time. Aaron’s job is to keep an eye on him.

Danny not only still thinks the outside world has monsters, but since his memories of his father are all the times when they played, or watched a movie, listened to music, or other happy times, when a social worker calls his case one of abuse, he gets upset. But he is curious about the outside world, and one day slips into the field behind the house, but has no idea which house is his; he walks into a neighbor’s home and slips into a bed right as the neighbor is getting out of the shower.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Maybe it’s the whole “sheltered kid makes his way in the world” theme, but Somewhere Boy kept reminding us of Sweet Tooth, even though this show is firmly rooted in the real world.

Our Take: Somewhere Boy, written by Pete Jackson (not to be confused with Peter Jackson of Lord Of The Rings fame), strikes us as a bit of a combination of a fairy tale (hence the reference to Sweet Tooth above) and a story about a person who is discovering himself after a lifetime of being isolated. Instead of leaning on one aspect or the other, Jackson mixes both in well, so the story just isn’t about Danny learning about porn or Instagram or about him getting a large dose of reality.

The second episode brings the whys of Danny’s situation into focus; his mother died in a car accident when he was a baby, and since then, Steve never let him go outside for fear of the monsters that he told Danny were all over the place. Danny never knew that his mother died in a car accident, much less how it happened. It’s helpful, of course, but aside from extreme grief, we still don’t know the extent of Steve’s mental health issues that got him so scared he’d lose Danny that he essentially kept his son prisoner for his entire life.

But the episode also shows aspects of Danny’s personality that are shaped by the isolation, like his desire to wear an old-fashioned suit or the fact that he fantasizes about 1930s movie starlets. As Danny finds out more about Steve, and learns to be a teenager from Aaron, as well as figure out who might have killed his mother in a drunken-driving hit-and-run, we’ll see what aspects of him change and which stay charmingly anachronistic.

Sex and Skin: None, aside the sounds of Aaron watching porn on his phone in the second episode.

Parting Shot: In a flashback, Steve has his arm around 7-year-old Danny on the couch and says, “I don’t want to lose you, too.”

Sleeper Star: Johann Myers adds a little bit of levity as Paul, who tries hard with Aaron but just gets told to “fuck off” when he tries to have a talk with Sue’s son.

Most Pilot-y Line: Oh, we love how the Brits can just throw around the c-word because to them, it just means a person is “fucking horrid and ghastly”, as Aaron explains to Donny, regardless of gender.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Somewhere Boy is a bit of an odd story but has a number of layers to it, to the point where we’re intrigued to see more of the onion peeled as each half-hour episode goes along.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.