Euphoria arrived in the UK with a reputation to live up to - a bad one.

Sure enough, the opening episode had everything you'd expect from a notoriously ‘controversial' teen drama that had allegedly ‘triggered mass panic' in the States when it screened two months ago.

Sex and drugs and violence inevitably proliferated - separately or in pairs (sex on drugs, violent sex, drugs with more drugs) - generally involving 17 year-olds, or in the case of one dealer, even younger.

Zendaya, the former Disney child star and Spider-Man: Homecoming actress who plays the heroine (High School student Rue Bennett), had felt the need to warn her 60 million followers on Instagram that the show was only suited to ‘mature audiences' and featured ‘graphic scenes.'

But she didn't say that by this she meant a close-up of a semi-erect penis, a montage of porn clips (included spanking and a man shouting ‘are you going to be an obedient little slut?!'), and Rue taking copious amounts of cocaine until she eventually overdosed.

‘I know a lot of people probably hate me right now,' her voice-over said as her younger sister found her, face covered in vomit and unconscious.

Some parents watching probably might have.

Euphoria was not quite their worst nightmare but it was a significant upgrade on the likes of Pretty Little Liars, Riverdale, Sex Education, and 13 Reasons Why.

The bad news was, Euphoria was HBO's first foray into the genre, so things were only going to get worse now that it had dared the competition to go further.

For once they weren't worried about their children watching a show making so many headlines but their precious darlings turning out like the kids in it or - if they were teenagers - that they might be like them already (when they were at school, at their friends', at parties: when they weren't with them basically).

Parents famously wonder what their kids are up to but if a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, Euphoria was more a case of Too Much Information.

Euphoria was not only about today's dissolute, disaffected, depressed, teenagers but a lot like them.

Its obsession with how it looked for example was constant - achingly cool in a way that was slightly naff too.

The soundtrack ranged from Charli XCX to obscure 60s funk band Soul Swingers but was (ostentatiously) mostly trap music.

Visually, besides the dark cutting edge pizzazz of Russian Doll or Black Mirror and some arty archive news footage, it had an array of slick gimmicks plundered from films like Reservoir Dogs, Goodfellas, and Trainspotting. 

With its voice-over narration, slow-mo shots, speedy/trippy drug depictions, and freeze frame Euphoria was like Spring Breakers made by Tarantino or (in the second show) the Brian De Palma version of Skins.

Not exactly original, admittedly, but pretty snazzy, very modern, and definitely better than Hollyoaks.

Euphoria's commitment to being shocking meanwhile (or trying to be) was formidable, bordering on pathological: the envy of any adolescent.

Zendaya's description on Instagram - ‘a raw and honest portrait of addiction, anxiety, and the difficulties of navigating life today' - was an understatement: far too bland.

Rue's summary of her life in the 17 years set the tone once Euphoria eventually started.

She was happy once she began her narration - before she was born. Suggesting she had been ‘repeatedly crushed' by her mother's ‘cruel cervix' was not so much gratuitous as hilariously adolescent.

9/11 had happened three days before Rue was born but (apparently) affected her further (dragging her ever down, obviously), spending the first 48 hours of her life ‘in the soft glow of the television' - in the hospital with her parents ‘watching those towers fall over and over again.'

What chance did she have?

None apparently.

The ‘post-9/11' generation is now perceived as a generation of ‘snowflakes.' Rue's hazy nihilism certainly fitted the profile.

‘The world moved too fast and my brain moved too slow.
I just showed up one day (in the world) - without a map or a compass or, to be honest, anyone capable of giving one iota of good advice,' she shrugged softly, referring to her parents in particular.

As for any romantic notions of her teachers being an influence, she tutted: ‘The world's ending, and I'm still supposed to go to High School?'

Euphoria was about Rue's story and the world she shared with girls like Jules, Cassie, and Kat, the show's premise maintained this was the world all teenagers today inhabited.

When she was six or seven, doctors thought Rue might have ‘obsessive compulsive disorder, attention deficit disorder, general anxiety disorder and possibly bi-polar disorder.' But they weren't sure.

Her panic attacks felt like ‘there was no more air left in the world.' When she was given liquid valium for one of them, ‘I thought: this is it.

This is the feeling I've been searching for my entire life. Because suddenly the world went quiet. And I felt safe, in my own head.'

After that she took her mother's Xanax, smoked dope, snorted coke, popped pills, but really only found it again with the oxygen she was given when she overdosed.

‘That's all I wanted - those two seconds of nothingness.'

People, or parents, may dismiss, disdain, or disapprove of Rue's behaviour but it's alarmingly possible a lot teenagers might share her outlook: ‘every second of every day you find yourself trying to out-run your anxiety.

And quite frankly I'm just f**king exhausted.'

The lives of the teenagers in Euphoria were consumed by trying to cope with one ‘issue' after another: cyber bullying, internet dating, having every move they made (even a panic attack) filmed by their friends (or enemies) on mobile phones and then posted on social media.

The strongest speeches were maybe trying too hard to ‘educate' or ‘enlighten' us about what young teenage girls in particular were dealing with, the ‘toxic masculinity' that was never below the surface with all-American jock-types like Nate and his bitter, sinister, misogynist father. 

Cassie and Jules were their respective victims.