2,273 words, 12 minutes read time.
Adolescence is the Netflix drama that has got the whole nation talking, not least because our Prime Minister, Kier Starmer, and Jack Thorne, who wrote the script for the four-part series from an idea from featured actor Stephen Graham, have decided to use it in in the cause of creating a moral panic against white working class boys. The claim is that these boys are being ‘radicalised’ online by ‘Red Pill’ ‘toxic-masculinity’ influencers (‘That Andrew Tate Shite’ to quote one of the characters). The implication is that this radicalisation carries with it the distinct possibility of tragic outcomes such as the one that is the subject of this drama, the violent killing of a schoolgirl by a male contemporary.
This is controversial because, statically, it’s clear that white boys are much less likely to use violence against women and girls, and much less likely to engage in knife crime in general than members of some other identifiable groups and communities.
Graham has even cited two real-life crimes as giving him the initial inspiration for the story. Both of the killers in these crimes were non-white. This being the case, it begs the question as to why it was that he or Thorne or those who commissioned the drama at Netflix saw fit to ‘race swap’ the central character.
I’ll return to this topic, but first I’ll approach the drama on purely artistic grounds, briefly assessing its strengths and weaknesses.
It is essentially a four-act play, each act corresponding to a roughly one-hour-long episode, and each filmed strikingly as one long single-take.
Act One concerns the arrest of thirteen-year-old Jamie, played superbly by Owen Cooper in his first acting role, on charges of stabbing to death his school colleague Katie.
Act Two focuses on the ongoing investigations at the school where they were both students.
Act Three is almost a two-hander between Jamie and the clinical psychologist Briony, played by Erin Doherty at the Special Training Centre that is his temporary place of incarceration several months after the murder.
Act Four concentrates on Jamie’s family, dad, mum, and sister as they struggle to come to terms with what has happened.
It’s a gripping watch with the realism brilliantly enhanced by the single-shot method of filming. Director Philip Barantini deserves much credit for the success of the drama.
I would, however, suggest that the play was perhaps an act too long, that the action could have been better condensed into three hour-long parts.
It certainly starts with a bang, with armed police smashing through the door of the Miller’s ordinary working class home to arrest Jamie, decimating the normality of life of this seemingly average family of four.
This act is essentially a very believable police procedural as the action switches from the house to the police station. All the performances here are spot on, from young Owen Cooper to Ashley Waters as DI Luke Bascombe, who is taking the lead on the case, to Mark Stanley as the solicitor Pal Barlow who has been appointed to assist Jamie.
The star here though is Graham as the dad, Eddie who we see go from complete disbelief as to what is happening, to grim determination to do his best in his role as his son’s ‘appropriate adult’, even though this is a term he has never heard of until this moment, to uncertainty as to his ability to fulfil his duties as a dad in circumstances that are way beyond the norm of his everyday life, to moments of defiance such as when Hamie is told he must strip naked for a full body search, to his breakdown when his absolute belief in Jamie’s innocence is shattered as the two of them are shown CCTV footage that seems to be conclusive evidence that his son did indeed repeatedly stab Katie to death.
Christine Temarco as the mum who tries her best to hold things together while fighting understandable feelings of jealousy at Jamie’s decision to choose his dad rather than her to play the Appropriate Adult role, is also excellent, as is Amelie Pease as the supportive sister.
Act Two, set at the school, was, I thought, a weak point in the drama. It seemed a little too convenient for the plot that DCI Bascombe should have a son, Adam (Amari Bacchus), at the very school where Jamie and Katie had come to know each other.
It is through Adam that the DCI, and we, learn something about the world of online influencers, the meaning of being ‘Red Pilled’ (eyes being opened to the truth) the 80-20 equation which claims that 80% of females are attracted to only 20% of males, with the implication being that many of these young men will face a life of involuntary celibacy.
Adam also outlines the meaning of different emojis, an elaborate and opaque system of symbols through which it appears Katie had been bating Jamie, denouncing him as ugly, thus giving him a motive for the murder.
We never see Adam again, and I couldn’t help but feel that he was a mere plot device, existing only to didactically ‘info’ drop’ the above points, and to introduce us to the children’s toxic online relationships.
Jo Hartley gave a fine supporting performance as the harassed, bewildered teacher Mrs Fenumore, but I wasn’t sure what we were supposed to make of Katie’s best friend Jade and the slight backstory, of mental health struggles and issues wit her mother that we are provide. Aside from her fight with Jamie’s friend Ryan (Caine Davis), which led to DI Bascombe’s discovery of the murder weapon, the character was, with no disrespect to the actress (Fatima Bojang), needless plot-filler whose screen time could have been substantially cut to the betterment of the whole.
Act Three was the strongest of the four, with a mesmerising performance from Erin Doherty as the Psychologist Briony Arishton, who has been commissioned to write an independent assessment of Jamie’s mental health and the possible motivations that turned him into a killer.
This is a powerfully written and performed section as Briony probes Jamie at the Special Education Centre, the sandwich she has brought in for him lying uneaten in one corner of the table across which they face each other (Jamie doesn’t like pickle).
The action here is certainly enhanced by the single-take approach, allowing room for improvisation as the psychologist seeks to elicit information from the thirteen-year-old on his relationship with his dad, his dad’s possible anger-management issues (he once destroyed a shed), his attitude to girls and women, his sexual experience and desires, and how he sees himself.
I didn’t quite believe that Jamie would believe himself to be ugly, as was symbiotically alleged by Katie. Briony raises this issue but without assuring Jamie that she doesn’t share Katie’s assessment of his looks. This is one of the two occasions when he explodes into a rage, and through these nicely played eruptions of anger, we begin to see that this is a damaged young man who, given the ‘right’ circumstances could indeed be capable of murder.
Briony succeeds in holding her cool throughout, though the mild breakdown after Jamie has left, unwillingly after she informs him that their interactions are now over, that she has everything she needs to make her assessment, is a delayed reaction that will be recognisable to anyone who has concluded a difficult interaction with an aggressive member of a challenging client group in the line of duty.
Act Four concentrates on Jamie’s family, with Jamie himself completely absent, save for a disembodied voice on the phone informing them that he has decided to change his plea from Not Guilty to Guilty. But, of course, the impact of what he has done is felt in every word and every gesture as Dad, on his fifteeth birthday, with full support from his loyal wife and daughter, strives to ‘take back the day’, to salvage some enjoyment via a family outing to the cinema after local youths have spray-painted ‘Nonce’ on the side of his works van.
The chemistry between the three family members is excellent, but as with Act Two, I thought there was unnecessary filler here that could have been cut. For instance, a young worker in the ‘Wainwrights’ shop, where the father has driven his family for assistance/advice on removing/covering the offending word on his van, was a character we could have lived without. I’m not sure where it was supposed to lead us when he recognised Eddie and offered his support to him and Jamie, claiming that people would be behind him if he ‘crowdfunded’ the funds for a full repaint job. The implication was, I suppose, that there was some vast network out there of fellow incels, Andrew Tate fans who would be ready to rally to the cause, should they receive the call. But we hadn’t really learnt enough about this world to buy into the idea of a mutually supportive movement. I found this section to be rather ‘on the nose’ and, frankly, silly.
Maybe this was nothing more than the result of binge-watching the whole thing in one sitting but I started to sag a bit towards the end, as the drama rather fizzled out with Eddie and Manda lamenting that they hadn’t been vigilant enough to be aware of Jamie’s online activities, ignorant of his ‘radicalisation’ and, finally, Salt of the Earth plumber Eddie breaking down in Jamie’s room, acknowledging that ‘I could have done more, son.’
In the end, though a gripping watch, I thought the drama was messy and confused. If the object of the exercise was to launch a moral crusade against online influencers pushing ‘toxic masculinity’ on young working class white boys, and writer Thorne now seems to be joining forces with Starmer with the call for ‘something to be done’ (perhaps the restriction of internet use for under 16s), then I thought we needed to be shown much more evidence of this happening.
This thread of the play has been elevated above all others, but there were other strands that were suggested as playing a part in Jamie’s motivation to kill. Online bullying through the use of emojis is one, and something that I, as the father of two teenage boys, wouldn’t mind knowing more about.
Father-son relationships were also touched upon, between DCI Bascombe and Adam as well as between Eddie and Jamie (though Bascombe was portrayed as the much more assertive, sensitive, in control of the two. I’m loathe to raise the question of race here, but it’s now become almost an inevitability that the strongest male role model in a Netflix drama, or indeed any TV drama, will be a black character). But issues around such relationships were raised and then left undeveloped. Overall, the drama was rather too broad-brush, and thus largely failed to hit its marks. This avoidance of telling us what to think would be fine and laudable were it not for how Thorne and Graham have since sought to use their works’ success as a means of bringing about political change.
Setting that aside, the drama certainly left much for the fathers of teenage boys, especially older dads like me who know little of this online world to think about.
For what it’s worth, I’ve chosen to largely allow my children to navigate their own way through this new online childhood, just as we earlier generations navigated our way through the old offline childhood, hopefully in the knowledge that parental help is at hand should they need it.
Whether that’s right or wrong, the play didn’t do nearly enough to lead me to believe that a draconian, potentially restrictive moral crusade is justified.
Yes, there is a crisis of masculinity in society. Society has been largely feminised, with masculine attributes routinely denounced as ‘toxic’ and the necessary role that male strength plays in a healthy society downplayed. This is mirrored in the world of work where traditionally male jobs that brought with them a degree of community status, as well as enough pay to raise a family, in construction and production, have largely disappeared, outsourced elsewhere. We’ve become a service society, and that is almost by definition a less masculine society.
But these are questions that are too deep and complex to be reduced to the need to restrict access to a few online influencers who may be peddling perhaps a distorted, unhealthy, caricatured idea of masculinity to our youth.
I can’t help but feel that there is an element of ‘look over here, not over there’ aspect to this apparent attempt to demonise white working class boys.
After all, there are calls for Adolescence to be shown in parliament and in schools. Fine. But there were no similar calls regarding the excellent Three Girls about the Pakistani grooming gangs.
I’ll conclude with a thought experience, bearing in mind that white boys are statistically far from the most frequent culprits when it comes to knife crime or violent/sexual crimes against girls and women. Imagine the excellent Act Thee of the drama but change Jamie into a boy of East Asian or Middle Eastern origin. Then, have Bryon deconstruct his attitude toward girls in relation to the religious and cultural norms of his community. Or ‘colour swap’ Jamie into a teenage black boy and unleash Byron’s considerable psychological skills on the macho culture of rap music and gang membership, and the lack of positive male role models caused by the much higher degree of absent fatherhood among that demographic.
Either of these would make for great drama, but great drama that would likely remain unseen.
