Why “Adolescence” has become a global smash hit

Like cats, many teenagers have their own neighbourhood maps, marked with dangers—this street is dodgy, that one is safe—that are invisible to adults. “Adolescence”, a hit new drama on Netflix, charts another shadowy world, this one online, which is often opaque to parents. Its genius is to position viewers as explorers alongside its characters; together they discover undreamed-of perils and emerge shaken and aghast.

“Adolescence” tells the story of 13-year-old Jamie Miller, who stabs to death a female classmate named Katie. For a gritty mini-series set in northern England, it has been a scorching global sensation. It has topped Netflix’s viewing charts in 71 countries. In Britain Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, praised it in Parliament, adding that he was watching it with his family.

It is a bravura feat of television. The acting is terrific. In the first of four episodes, the police raid the boy’s home and cart him off for questioning. Presented with proof of his guilt, his father Eddie, played by Stephen Graham, flinches from his son and then embraces him—a perfect physical haiku of shock and stubborn love. In the third instalment a psychologist (Erin Doherty) assesses Jamie, who, in Owen Cooper’s magnificent debut performance, slides between childish wheedling, grumpy sulks, anxious bluster and chilling menace.

Each episode consists of a single real-time take: the second unfolds in an unruly school, the last sketches the aftermath for Jamie’s broken family. The camera rides with Jamie to the police station, tracks a copper on a foot-chase and soars on a drone to the murder scene. The technique hints at the sweep of connections that are the context of the crime, immersing you in the rush and claustrophobia of events.

But, for adult viewers, the power also comes from watching their tv counterparts realise how little they understood the youngsters’ lives. A flailing detective (Ashley Walters) uncovers the nasty meanings of what had seemed harmless online interactions. “We thought he was safe,” Eddie says of his son’s internet habit. Instead Jamie is tainted by a toxic manosphere that portrays women and girls as objects, enemies and prey. Music, slang, fashion: grown-ups tend to be last to grasp teenage trends. “Adolescence” dramatises the nauseous fear of finding out too late.

The blistering show has revived debates about restricting smartphone and social-media use among children (as some countries already do). At countless kitchen tables parents are being initiated into the coded language of emojis. Those with teenage boys may be tempted to lock them up protectively in their rooms—until they recall that lonely bedrooms can be risky places, and just as important, that anger and coercion are poor examples to set. The problem, after all, isn’t only about teenagers, and neither is “Adolescence”.

Mr Graham, who co-wrote the story with Jack Thorne, a prolific dramatist, has said it was partly inspired by recent cases of teenage boys murdering girls. Murder is the most extreme of a continuum of awful harms inflicted on umpteen girls and young women by boys and young men, many of them enmeshed in online misogyny and warped by violent porn. The response to “Adolescence” is by no means a flighty moral panic.

At the same time the evil at its heart is part of a wider tragedy, one plotted in official homicide statistics. On average, for instance, more than one woman is killed every week in England and Wales by a current or former partner. When the victim is a child under 16, the suspect is more likely to be a parent than a peer. Some of these perpetrators are doubtless familiar with Andrew Tate (a misogynist influencer name-checked on screen). Others may not have heard of him.

“Adolescence” knows that male rage and insecurity are older than social media and stretch beyond childhood. The moving finale intimates how fury can cascade down generations. A caring dad but also a coiled spring, Eddie describes being thrashed by his own father and his determination to be gentler with his kids, one of whom nevertheless commits an appalling crime.

Commentary on the series has understandably focused on the dragons that ensnare children on the web, revelations to many real-life parents as they are to Jamie’s. Yet vital and harrowing as that conversation is, it misses out the perennial threat that men can pose to women—and the damaging influences that lurk even in loving homes. “He has a terrible temper,” Jamie’s mother tells Eddie, “but so have you.” ■