In the third episode of Netflix’s Adolescence, Erin Doherty’s psychologist sits across from Jamie Miller, the 13-year-old boy accused of stabbing a schoolmate to death. She’s poised, methodical, her voice measured to a fine point, as if to ensure not even a whisper of judgment leaks through. Jamie — played with brilliant unshowy naturalism by debutant Owen Cooper — looks at her with a wary amusement, like he’s figuring out the mechanics of an unfamiliar toy. The brewing war between the two minds, one probing, the other deflecting, twisting, grinning at the right moments, makes your stomach turn: is this boy simply a confused child, swept up in something he barely understands? Or is there something more insidious lurking behind those spitefully smug eyes?
Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham’s Adolescence isn’t your standard-issue Netflix crime drama. Sure, it shares some DNA with Broadchurch — that same quiet dread of a community slowly unraveling — but do not come looking for shock revelations or gasp-inducing plot twists. This new mini-series moves with an almost unbearable intimacy, playing out over four episodes that each unfold in real time, captured in a single, unbroken take.
Adolescence (English)
Creators: Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham
Cast: Stephen Graham, Owen Cooper, Ashley Walters, Erin Doherty, Faye Marsay
Episodes: 4
Runtime: 55-60 minutes
Storyline: A family’s world turns upside down when 13-year-old Jamie Miller is arrested for murdering a schoolmate
The single-take format is a suffocating choice from director Philip Barantini. This means there are no cuts, no reprieve, no omniscient eye pulling back to give us perspective. We’re trapped, watching lives collapse under the weight of something awful.
That ‘something’ isn’t just happening to the 13-year-old Jamie, who barely has time to process the Miranda rights being read to him before realising he’s soiled himself; or his father, Eddie (Stephen Graham at his absolute best), who watches, barefoot and bewildered, as his son is hauled away for the murder of a schoolmate; or even us watching on, feeling the accusation land like a punch in the gut.
A still from ‘Adolescence’
| Photo Credit:
Netflix
Adolescence is charting something more insidious. This isn’t a whodunit. It’s not even a “did-he-do-it?” Barantini’s direction is trained on the unnoticed forces that shape a boy long before he understands what’s shaping him. A lesser show would have turned Jamie into a puzzle to be solved, the sum of clues leading to a definitive answer, but Adolescence never feels didactic. It forces us to sit in uncertainty, to examine the systems that create boys like Jamie and the blind spots that allow them to slip through. It is a masterclass in tension, in restraint, in storytelling that lets us do the work.
The third episode in particular is a revelation. Doherty’s Briony has seen too many boys like Jamie, and understands exactly what’s at stake, patiently picking at the armor he doesn’t realise he’s wearing. Opposite her, Cooper is a marvel. He shifts between nervous fidgeting and self-assured bravado with terrifying precision. When he parrots the talking points of the manosphere, he speaks with the confidence of someone who believes he has cracked the code of the universe.
Adolescence doesn’t need a soapbox. It’s entirely devoid of any monologue warning of the dangers of internet echo chambers, or any overwrought exposé on the rise of misogynistic influencers. It trusts us to sit with what we already know: that boys like Jamie are everywhere, that their slide into these spaces isn’t some backroom transformation but something that happens right in front of us. And that their good, loving parents who would swear up and down that they know their child, often don’t see it happening until it’s far too late.
What the show does so brilliantly is dissect the mechanics of modern boyhood, piece by piece. The fragile male ego. The insidious way incel subcultures wrap their arms around young minds and refuse to let go. The slow, almost imperceptible shift from curiosity to resentment, from loneliness to anger, from anger to action. Digital radicalisation isn’t a fringe phenomenon anymore, but a crisis unfolding in bedrooms and group chats while the adults remain catastrophically unprepared to address it. Jamie belongs to a generation raised on Discord servers and Twitch streams in a post-Andrew Tate world. Outrage is engagement, misogyny is repackaged as self-improvement, and entitlement and aggression are not only justified but encouraged. He doesn’t see himself as radicalised. He thinks he’s woken up to the truth.
A still from ‘Adolescence’
| Photo Credit:
Netflix
The implications are staggering: What happens when boys are raised in a culture that tells them their anger is righteous, that their struggles are someone else’s fault, that their power is theirs to reclaim by any means necessary? How many boys — feeling lost, lonely, unheard — will stumble into a world that tells them their frustrations are a valid call to arms?
But Adolescence can’t be reduced to just a study in despair. It’s also about resilience, particularly in Eddie, who embodies both the failures and the potential of emotionally stunted men. The show exposes the cracks, but also offers a glimmer of what rebuilding might look like. The writing makes the best of its unease to probe deeper, asking disconcerting but necessary questions.
Few television dramas of late have felt as urgent or as necessary. Adolescence is a brutal, brilliant examination of how modern masculinity is being shaped, warped, and weaponised before our eyes. If we don’t start paying attention, it will not be long before another Jamie Miller emerges, entirely convinced he has done nothing wrong.
Adolescence is available to stream on Netflix
Published – March 19, 2025 03:39 pm IST
