It begins with a child’s arrest. Jamie, 13 years old, is taken from his home in a dawn raid—accused of murdering a female classmate. What unfolds over the next four episodes is not a murder mystery, but a haunting examination of how a seemingly ordinary boy can commit an unthinkable act—and how no one saw it coming.
A Series That Hurts Because It Hits So Close
Created by Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne, Adolescence landed on Netflix at a chillingly relevant moment. Just as news broke that a real-life UK killer had consumed misogynistic online content before committing a triple murder, this fictional story tackled the exact same questions: What’s happening to our boys? Why are they drawn into violent ideologies? And why aren’t we doing more to stop it?
At the heart of the show is Jamie, played with astonishing depth by newcomer Owen Cooper. Jamie is not a caricature of evil—he’s a kid. A kid who is bullied, confused, and quietly radicalized online. A kid who still has space-themed wallpaper in his bedroom. A kid who murders someone.
The most terrifying part? You know someone like him. Or you’re raising someone like him.
A Wake-Up Call for Fathers, Sons, and Everyone In Between
This show is not comfortable. It’s not meant to be. Stephen Graham, in a career-best performance as Jamie’s father Eddie, embodies every parent’s worst nightmare: realizing too late that your child was in pain and you didn’t see it.
In one of the most devastating final scenes in recent television, Eddie tucks Jamie’s teddy bear into bed and whispers, “Sorry, son. I should’ve done better.”
As a father, how do you recover from that?
The show never blames parents—but it doesn’t let them off the hook either. Eddie and his wife Manda (the extraordinary Christine Tremarco) aren’t abusive or negligent. They’re caring, working-class people who believed they were doing enough. Jamie came home, shut his bedroom door, and they thought he was safe.
He wasn’t.
Masculinity, Misogyny, and the Digital Abyss
Adolescence goes beyond family dynamics to explore the toxic cocktail of male insecurity and online radicalization. It takes us into the ‘manosphere’—a digital underworld of incels, pickup artists, and men’s rights activists that feed boys a steady diet of misogyny, entitlement, and rage.
Jamie isn’t a monster. He’s a mirror. He represents what happens when boys are taught to suppress emotion, to mask vulnerability with anger, and to see rejection not as part of life, but as betrayal.
It’s a story grounded in real-world statistics: knife crime among UK teens has skyrocketed in the past decade.
Teenage boys are absorbing violent, hyper-masculine messages online, often undetected. Parents, teachers, and communities are struggling to keep up.
Not Just a Drama—A Call to Action
Each episode is filmed in a single unbroken take, heightening the tension and immersing viewers in the raw emotion of the story. It’s a bold stylistic choice, but one that serves the story perfectly. There’s nowhere to look away. Nowhere to hide.
And maybe that’s the point. Adolescence demands to be watched—especially by men, and especially by those raising boys. It’s not just about guilt or blame. It’s about awareness. About breaking silences. About asking the hard questions before another tragedy unfolds.
This is a series that will leave you shaken—but perhaps more importantly, it will make you talk. To your children. To each other. To yourself.
Because what Adolescence shows us is that the question isn’t just why did this happen?
It’s how many more times must it happen before we act?
