[Image: Netflix]
Everyone is talking about Netflix’s new British crime drama that asks the hard questions about growing up in a digital world fuelled by male rage, toxic masculinity, and online misogyny.
Even before Adolescence dropped a single episode on Netflix, the five-star reviews came rolling in. The Guardian hailed it as “the closest thing to TV perfection in decades,” while Forbes gushed about its “all-time technical mastery” as it was filmed in one continuous shot, Rolling Stone called it “a harrowing, heartbreaking must-watch,” and Mashable declared, “this is how crime dramas should be done.”
Universal acclaim like that is rare, but when the show finally hit screens last week, audiences weren’t about to be left out of the hype. In just four days, Adolescence racked up a jaw-dropping 24.3 million views, claiming the top spot in over 71 countries.
As it stands, Adolescence is one of the most powerful shows out there, dominating the global cultural zeitgeist and becoming the first ever UK streaming show to top the weekly British ratings chart while also amassing the biggest audience for any streaming TV show in the UK in a single week, Deadline notes.
And its arrival has been almost eerily well-timed. The series landed on Netflix just as news broke that crossbow killer Kyle Clifford had scoured the internet for misogynistic podcasts and binged Andrew Tate videos hours before slaughtering three female members of the Hunt family. This, too, while Nicholas Prosper brutally murdered his family – the timing of which stopped him from going forth with his plan for the ‘massacre of the century’, after being thoroughly radicalised by twisted content on the internet.
Then again, grim stories like this are never in short supply. Maybe Adolescence would have felt disturbingly relevant no matter when it aired.
The idea first hit Adolescence star Stephen Graham like a gut punch after a string of brutal, senseless crimes. In 2021, 12-year-old Ava White was stabbed to death by a 14-year-old boy in Graham’s home city of Liverpool. Two years later, 15-year-old Elianne Andam was killed outside a Croydon shopping centre, her attacker a 17-year-old armed with a kitchen knife, per The Guardian.
“It really hit my heart,” Graham said at the show’s premiere. “I just thought: ‘What’s happening? How have we come to this? What’s going on with our society?’”
The actor roped in his regular collaborator, top-tier screenwriter Jack Thorne, to create this hard-hitting drama interrogating why boys are committing such extreme acts against girls.
That darkness fuels Adolescence, which unpacks the fallout after a 13-year-old boy is accused of murder. As his family, school, and psychologist scramble to make sense of the unthinkable, the show digs into the messy, painful truth behind the headlines. It’s raw, it’s relentless – and it’s hands down the best thing you’ll watch this year.
The Guardian reckons the show has the potential to save lives because Adolescence rips the lid off a terrifying reality of how an outwardly average, self-loathing, and dangerously impressionable teenager can be radicalised right under everyone’s nose.
His parents recall Jamie coming home from school, heading straight upstairs, slamming his bedroom door and spending hours at his computer. They thought he was safe. They thought they were doing the right thing. It’s a scenario which will ring bells with many parents. Some will be alarm bells.
We drill kids on crossing roads and avoiding strangers, but when it comes to navigating the internet? We leave them to figure it out alone.
There’s a gaping chasm between what parents think their kids are doing online and what’s actually happening. We assume they’re on Roblox but they’re on Reddit. We tell ourselves they’re doing homework or just texting friends but in reality, they’re watching porn or, as DS Frank so sharply puts it, “that Andrew Tate shite.”
Jamie’s plight becomes a poignant study of the nightmarish influence of the so-called manosphere – that pernicious online world of “red pills”, “truth groups” and the 80-20 rule (which posits that 80% of women are attracted to 20% of men). It’s a shadowy sphere populated by alphas, “incels”, MRAs (men’s rights activists) and PUAs (pickup artists), whose fragile egos turn into entitled fury. From mocking emojis on Instagram to the dark web and deepfakes, it’s another country to anyone over 40. No wonder parents are, as Bascombe’s son points out, “blundering around, not getting it”.
That’s why Adolescence is more than a crime drama; it’s a cautionary tale. A wake-up call about dragging teenagers off screens and back into the real world. A sharp reminder that human connection – actual face-to-face time – might just save them. It’s a plea to pay attention, to talk, to listen, before they disappear down the digital rabbit hole for good.
Adolescence will start the conversations we should have been having years ago.
Watch Adolescence on Netflix now.
[Sources: Deadline & The Guardian & The Spinoff]
