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PORTSIDE CULTURE
ADOLESCENCE IS THE RARE GRIPPING CRIME DRAMA THAT DOESN’T NEED A
TWIST
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Saloni Gajjar
March 26, 2025
AV Club
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_ Netflix's four-part series puts guessing games aside and instead
tells a dark, timely, conversation-starting story. _
, Photo: Ben Blackall/Netflix
_Adolescence_
[[link removed]], Netflix’s
chart-topping
[[link removed]] new drama,
opens like any murder mystery (albeit one in which each installment is
shot in single take). Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham’s British
series kicks off with a thirteen-year-old kid arrested on suspicion of
killing his female classmate. Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper, a star in
the making [[link removed]] in
his onscreen debut) repeatedly proclaims his innocence as his house is
raided, and he’s quickly taken to a detention center,
strip-searched, and interrogated by the cops. And it’s hard not to
empathize with his pleas when all you see is a child getting hurled in
a police car and crying for his dad, Eddie (Graham). It’s
particularly tough to watch through the lens of his helpless family,
with Eddie accompanying Jamie around the facility and his mother and
older sister anxiously awaiting updates in a waiting room.
This distressing first hour raises the central question of whether
young Jamie could’ve taken a human life. What could have compelled
him to do it and how would he have pulled it off? So it’s a jolt
when the premiere closes with a definitive answer. The detectives
display CCTV footage of Jamie stabbing Katie Leonard multiple times in
a parking lot. Eddie looks at the video in disbelief as his son, still
in denial, weeps. By confirming Jamie is the
killer, _Adolescence _plays its ace fairly quickly. It’s not a
formulaic whodunit at all but an insightful whydunit. Instead of
guessing games, the series dissects the pervading influence of the
manosphere and incel culture on an impressionable boy and how most
parents and schools are unfortunately unequipped to recognize or deal
with such ugly truths.
_Adolescence_ takes on a serious topic that doesn’t require twists,
making it stand out among crime shows like HBO’s excellent _Mare Of
Easttown _and _Sharp Objects_ (which also center around girls’
deaths). Those miniseries understandably feature jarring cliffhangers
to build suspense so we can try to figure out the murderer’s
identity. _Adolescence _tells us who it early on—and paves the way
for its writers to drill down on Jamie’s motivations and mindset.
There are no red herrings (like in AMC’s _The Killing_), court
trials (Hulu’s _Under The Bridge_), or a media frenzy
(ITV’s _Broadchurch_) here—and instead the audience just has to
sit with the tragedy.
The focus is on portraying the vulnerabilities of a teen that make him
susceptible to the toxic masculinity thriving in our hellish,
easy-to-access digital landscape. _Adolescence_ looks at how the
ideology that comes with giving bigots a platform affects everyone
around Jamie, his peers, and the community at large in their
day-to-day lives. Episode two lays the groundwork for this by
name-dropping misogynist alt-right loser
[[link removed]] Andrew
Tate, the ridiculous 80/20 incel rule, and cyberbullying. But this
drama’s true purpose is fleshed out most poignantly in its third
hour.
Set seven months after Jamie’s arrest, the third episode is an
almost hour-long, skin-crawling exchange between him and a
psychologist responsible for his mental-health report. Left alone in a
room, Jamie and Briony (Erin Doherty) have an eye-opening, emotional
face-off. In their incisive writing, Thorne and Graham are unafraid to
tackle how someone like Jamie—who hails from a loving, middle-class
family, is intelligent, has a couple of close friends, and is
otherwise “normal”—gets molded by the destructive ideas promoted
about men and women in online forums.
Jamie is friendly, afraid, paranoid, resentful, arrogant, cocky, and
briefly violent in his chat with Briony. He jokes with her and desires
her approval, yet towers over her when she’s sitting down to feel
big. His behavior is as transparent and scary as the words with which
he expresses his thoughts about how he looks, Katie’s appearance,
sexual experiences, porn, social media, and his family members. In
explaining why he asked Katie out, Jamie tells Briony, “I just
thought she might be weak.” At one point, he wonders whether the
therapist thinks Katie—a dead girl—is a bitch, almost as a way to
justify his actions because Katie rejected him. Jamie’s encounter
with Briony is terrifying but heartbreaking: He is just a 13-year-old
lad struggling with loneliness and seeking validation, only he looks
for help in harmful places. When he accidentally confesses, the camera
lingers on Briony processing it in a moment that you don’t often see
in TV crime dramas.
The rest of the series deals with how Jamie’s parents handle his
revelations a year later (with confusion, sorrow, and remorse at not
being able to pick up on or control their child’s digital
footprint). And while every episode being an immersive oner adds to
the intensity, the third outing is the pivotal pressure cooker (with
great performances by Doherty and Cooper to boot).
While _Adolescence_ is not based on a specific true story,
the co-creators shared
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they were inspired by several real incidents to make their work feel
like it’s ripped from the headlines. And that’s as shocking and
sobering as any plot twist.
* incels
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* cyberbullying
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* adolescence
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* NETFLIX
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* The Manosphere
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* toxic masculinity
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* alt right
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* andrew tate
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