APRIL 10, 2025 | OPINION | By Fiona Frankel
It’s 6:00 a.m. and the front door is broken down by a team of police officers storming in to arrest a thirteen-year-old boy for allegedly murdering his classmate. This is the opening scene of Netflix’s new British four-part series, “Adolescence.”
Though already captivating with its startling plotline and dark themes, the show’s main hallmark is in its filming style. Each of its roughly hour-long episodes are shot in one continuous take, the camera moving alongside characters and contributing to the tense, frenzied feel of the series.
The first episode follows the show’s main character, Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper), as he is awoken and placed under arrest. The camera — and to an extent, the viewer — joins him in the police van along with two detectives as he sobs, shaking with fear and insists on his innocence. We accompany him to the station as he is processed and questioned; we question his culpability with his tearful older sister (Amélie Pease) and crane our necks in interest alongside Jamie’s father (Stephen Graham) as the detectives present incriminating evidence and the episode ends.
The most powerful episode is undoubtedly the third, a penultimate window into Jamie’s session with a forensic psychologist seven months after the murder. Though “Adolescence” is his debut role, Cooper’s ability to deliver an eerily intense performance is astounding, especially as the viewer becomes gradually aware of his motive.
Much of the discourse surrounding the series has been centered around its relevance to the current state of young men, who have become increasingly susceptible to influence by alt-right rhetoric in the age of social media. This concept was initially broached in the second episode, as the detective inspector’s son translates Instagram jargon to explain that Jamie was being bullied before the murder. Jack Thorne, the series’ screenwriter, has used its quick rise to fame to voice his encouragement to British lawmakers to pass a social media ban for those under age 16. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer watched the series with his two children and subsequently shared that he was concerned the UK “may have a problem with boys and young men that [they] need to address.”
Though the series’ release has heightened an ongoing conversation regarding the allowance of smartphones in schools and age limits on social media, there has been considerably less focus on another central theme of the show: how to parent these young men and prevent them from succumbing to misogynistic, alt-right ideologies. The fourth episode, following the intensity of the third, attempts to be more optimistic but quickly evolves into an assessment of the Miller family, over a year after the murder and approaching Jamie’s trial. After the difficult events of the day, which lasted over an hour on the father’s birthday, the episode concludes with the Miller parents facing an intense reckoning of what they could have done differently with their son.
The father-son relationship is a recurring theme of the show, with Jamie demanding to see his father in the pilot episode and his therapist (Erin Doherty) making frequent references to it in the third. Still, it becomes clear that it was also an entirely standard relationship, with no presence of abuse or trauma. Jamie was simply another screen-addicted young boy parroting that which he heard, read and watched online, particularly regarding women and his sense of masculinity.
In some ways, this is far more concerning. We hear this story often in a nonfiction context: school shooters whose parents were unconcerned about their child before the event, rapists whose family and friends could have sworn by their good character beforehand. Oftentimes, it is not the presence of abuse or the perpetuation of similar ideologies in a child’s household that leads them down these paths. Rather, it is the absence of any conversation at all. Especially in an era arguably focused on the progress and uplifting of young women, young men are left floundering to question what masculinity can manifest as and what it means for them. This cavity provides a space for influencers like Andrew Tate to flourish, taking advantage of the absence of a contemporary understanding of masculinity and creating a platform that defines what it means to be a man.
This gap cannot persist. Parents must have these conversations with their children from an early age, demonstrating healthy behavior as it pertains to gender and encouraging their parenting peers to do the same. “Adolescence” demonstrates the potential consequences of leaving a young boy like Jamie to fall victim to a toxic ideology that preys upon insecurity. Additionally, though Jamie’s case is somewhat hyperbolic, young men that can be defined as ‘incels’ or at least consume similar content are susceptible to acting out violently towards others, as is the case in “Adolescence,” or — more likely harming — themselves. Early conversations about consent, gender, mental health, and more are imperative not only for the safety and well-being of their female peers but for young men as well. “Adolescence” teaches us that without these actions, we will continue placing boys in positions of vulnerability.