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Adolescence (TV series)

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Adolescence
Promotional poster
GenreCrime drama
Created by
Written by
  • Jack Thorne
  • Stephen Graham
Directed byPhilip Barantini
Starring
Composers
  • Aaron May
  • David Ridley
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Original languageEnglish
No. of episodes4
Production
Executive producers
ProducerJo Johnson
CinematographyMatthew Lewis
Running time51–65 minutes
Production companies
Original release
NetworkNetflix
Release13 March 2025 (2025-3-13)

Adolescence is a British television crime drama created by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham and directed by Philip Barantini. It centres on a 13-year-old schoolboy named Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) who is arrested for the murder of a girl in his school. Each of its four episodes was shot in one continuous take.

The miniseries premiered on Netflix on 13 March 2025, to critical acclaim for its directing, writing, and cinematography, with special attention paid to its atmosphere and performances. Adolescence was the first streaming show to place at the top of the Barb Audiences weekly television ratings.

Premise

In an English town, armed police raid a family home and arrest Jamie Miller, a 13-year-old boy, on suspicion of the murder of a classmate, Katie Leonard. Jamie is processed and held at a police station for questioning and then remanded in custody at a secure training centre. Investigations at Jamie's school and interviews by a forensic psychologist reveal that Jamie has been chronically bullied via social media. Other students, including Katie, had targeted him on Instagram, calling Jamie ugly and labelling him an incel. Jamie has come to internalise these things and lashes out at his psychologist. At home, Jamie's family deals with the community's backlash against them as they work together to cope with Jamie's arrest and subsequent detention.

Cast and characters

Main

Guest

  • Emilia Holliday as Katie Leonard
  • Lewis Pemberton as Tommy
  • Austin Haynes as Fredo
  • Alfie Ward as Moray
  • Elodie Grace Walker as Georgie
  • Douglas Russell as Victor

Episodes

No.TitleDirected byWritten byOriginal release date [1]
1"Episode 1"Philip BarantiniJack Thorne & Stephen Graham13 March 2025 (2025-3-13)
Detective Inspector Luke Bascombe and Detective Sergeant Misha Frank lead a police raid at the home of the Miller family: father Eddie, mother Manda, daughter Lisa, and 13-year-old son Jamie. They arrest Jamie on suspicion of murder and take him to the nearby police station. A tearful Jamie professes his innocence as he is processed and taken to a detention cell while his family arrives at the station. Eddie agrees to be Jamie's "appropriate adult" and accompany him as he is searched and questioned. Eddie privately asks Jamie whether he has committed the crime and believes his denial. Barlow, the solicitor appointed to represent Jamie, arrives and advises Jamie not to respond to questions about the previous night. During Jamie's formal interview, Bascombe and Frank reveal that Jamie has made several sexually explicit comments about female models on Instagram. He is then questioned about his classmate Katie Leonard, whose murdered body was found in a car park the night before. Bascombe plays CCTV footage of Jamie stabbing Katie to death before terminating the interview. Jamie and Eddie weep in the interrogation room; Eddie briefly recoils when Jamie touches him before they tightly embrace.
2"Episode 2"Philip BarantiniJack Thorne & Stephen Graham13 March 2025 (2025-3-13)
Three days after the murder, Bascombe and Frank visit Jamie's secondary school to speak to Jamie and Katie's classmates, hoping to learn Jamie's motive and the location of the murder weapon. Katie's best friend Jade is especially upset by the murder and refuses to cooperate with the officers. She later assaults Jamie's friend Ryan, accusing him of getting Katie killed. When Bascombe and Frank interview Ryan, he is initially cooperative but soon turns evasive, leaving the room when the murder weapon is mentioned. Bascombe's son Adam, a student at the school, informs his father that Katie left comments on Jamie's Instagram page using a secret emoji language to accuse him of being an incel, resulting in a cyberbullying campaign against him. As Bascombe and Frank attempt to question Ryan again, he flees through a window, and Bascombe chases him out of the school. When Ryan is caught, he reveals that the knife Jamie used to stab Katie was his. Ryan is arrested for conspiracy, with Frank leaving to file charges against Jamie. Bascombe picks up Adam from school so they can spend more time together. Eddie visits the site of Katie's murder to leave flowers in remembrance.
3"Episode 3"Philip BarantiniJack Thorne & Stephen Graham13 March 2025 (2025-03-13)
Seven months after the murder, forensic psychologist Briony Ariston meets with Jamie at a youth detention facility to prepare a pre-trial report on his mental capacity. Briony assures Jamie that her only goal is to evaluate his understanding of the circumstances surrounding the case, not the case itself. Jamie, however, engages in a tenuously gripped game of one-upmanship. Briony questions Jamie about his attitude towards women and himself. Jamie recounts that Katie had taken a topless photo for a classmate she was attracted to, and that boy spread it around the school without her consent. This hurt Katie, and Jamie asked Katie out, figuring she would be emotionally vulnerable and thus more likely to accept. She rebuffed him and proceeded to leave comments on his Instagram page. Throughout the interview, Jamie's mood fluctuates between friendly and aggressive. This includes an accidental confession to the murder and several outbursts of anger that unnerve Briony. After she informs Jamie that this session is their last, Jamie demands to know if Briony likes him personally, but she refuses to answer, further agitating Jamie. The security guard is forced to drag Jamie out of the interview room. Briony is visibly shaken before leaving.
4"Episode 4"Philip BarantiniJack Thorne & Stephen Graham13 March 2025 (2025-03-13)
Thirteen months after the murder, the Millers have made attempts to return to normality as Jamie awaits trial. On Eddie's 50th birthday, his van is spray-painted by teenagers. Eddie plans to take Manda and Lisa to the cinema later that day to lighten the mood, but they first go to a hardware store to remove the paint from the van. There, Eddie is further distressed by an employee recognising him and awkwardly expressing support for Jamie. Eddie buys some paint to recoat the van. Outside, he spots the teens who tagged the van and angrily threatens them before throwing the contents of the can of paint on his van out of anger. On the drive home, Jamie calls and announces his plan to plead guilty. At the house, Eddie and Manda come to terms with Jamie's predicament, blaming themselves for not paying attention to his online radicalisation. Eddie breaks down on Jamie's bed.

Production

Development

Adolescence was originally conceived by Stephen Graham as a response to cases of knife crime by teenagers in the United Kingdom, including the murders of Ava White, Elianne Andam and Brianna Ghey.[2][3] He decided to create a drama exploring the motivation of extreme acts of violence against girls by young boys, and collaborated with screenwriter Jack Thorne.[4] Speaking on BBC Radio 4's arts programme Front Row, Thorne stated that the two writers wanted to "look in the eye of modern male rage" and examine the influence of public figures such as Andrew Tate on boys.[5]

The series was announced in March 2024 with the working title Adolescence to be written by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham.[6] It is a four-part limited crime drama told in a real-time, one-shot style, with Philip Barantini as director. Barantini and Graham previously collaborated on Boiling Point (2021), which was also shot in one take. Warp Films, Matriarch Productions and Plan B Entertainment produced the series for Netflix.[7][8] Jo Johnson is series producer, and Graham, Thorne and Barantini are executive producers alongside Mark Herbert, Emily Feller, Hannah Walters, Brad Pitt, Jeremy Kleiner, Dede Gardner and Nina Wolarsky.[9]

Casting

Owen Cooper was cast in the role of the teenage murder suspect, Jamie Miller, at the age of 13, with no previous professional acting experience. Casting director Shaheen Baig had considered 500 boys for the part, but Cooper attracted her attention after sending her a demo tape and secured the role.[10] Baig found Cooper and several of the other young cast members through Drama MOB in Manchester and Articulate Drama School and Agency in Bradford. Staff members of these drama schools, which serve students from underrepresented and deprived communities, resented the narrative that these actors had "done nothing and came from nowhere" prior to this production.[11]

Filming

Graham, Owen Cooper, Ashley Walters, and Erin Doherty star. Filming began in the United Kingdom in July 2024 and finished around October 2024.[12][13]

Adolescence is noted for its extensive use of one-shot filming, as each episode is shot in one take.[14] Shooting was planned through multiple rehearsals building up to full technical run-throughs, during which the director of photography would plan camera movements. Each one-hour episode was shot around 10 times, with two takes per day. Episodes were shown as completed in one take, with no cuts or blending of shots together with CGI.[15] Graham said that each episode took three weeks in total.[16] The takes used were as follows: first episode, 2nd take; second episode, 13th take; third episode, 12th take; fourth episode, 16th take.[16] The series' four episodes were not shot in chronological order: Cooper's first day on set was shooting episode 3.[16]

Filming locations for Adolescence included South Kirkby, South Elmsall and Sheffield in Yorkshire.[17][18] Minsthorpe Community College in South Elmsall was used as a location for the school scenes in "Episode 2". The interior scenes at the police station were shot at a specially constructed film set at the Production Park studio facility in South Kirkby in order to accommodate the complexities of single-shot filming.[19][20]

Broadcast

The series was released on Netflix on 13 March 2025.[1] It became the most watched streaming television show in the United Kingdom in a single week, beating the record set by the Netflix series Fool Me Once in January 2024.[21]

Adolescence has seen significant viewership success on Netflix following its release. In its first three weeks, the series garnered 96.7 million views on the platform. For the week ending March 30, 2025, it recorded 30.4 million views and ranked in the top 10 most-watched lists across all 93 countries tracked by Netflix's top 10 metrics. This performance has placed Adolescence ninth on Netflix's all-time viewership list, which is based on viewership data collected over the first 91 days of a title's availability.[22][23]

Reception

Adolescence has been widely praised by critics.[5] On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 99% of 92 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 9.4/10. The website's consensus reads: "Stylistically bold and beautifully acted from top to bottom, Adolescence is a masterclass in televisual storytelling and a searing viewing experience that scars."[24] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, calculated a score of 91 out of 100 based on 27 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[25]

Writing in The Guardian, Lucy Mangan stated that Adolescence was "the closest thing to TV perfection in decades", singling out the acting by Cooper and Doherty for particular praise.[10] Nandini Balial of RogerEbert.com also praised Cooper's acting for capturing "the quicksilver nature of those fraught years between childhood and adulthood".[26] Anita Singh of The Daily Telegraph found the series to be "quietly devastating" and the acting to be "phenomenal", although she said that the single-take filming technique could feel "like a gimmick".[27] Sophie Butcher of Empire praised the continuous shooting, stating that it was "the most dizzying TV feat of the year" which served to enhance the on-screen emotion.[15]

Adolescence was the first streaming show to place at the top of the Barb Audiences weekly television ratings.[21]

Political impact

Prime Minister Keir Starmer holding a round table with the creators of the show, 31 March 2025

According to The Guardian, the show highlights the ways in which the manosphere has affected adolescent boys, with characters directly naming Andrew Tate and the "red pill" community as key influences on Jamie and other boys his age.[10] Anneliese Midgley, a Member of Parliament, called for the series to be screened to Parliament and in schools, claiming it could help counter misogyny and violence against women and girls.[28] Prime Minister Keir Starmer backed the call, writing on Twitter, "As a father, watching Adolescence with my teenage son and daughter hit home hard."[29][30] The show was made free for viewing in UK secondary schools after Starmer's backing.[31]

In March 2025, businessman and Trump administration advisor Elon Musk promoted a conspiracy theory on X that the show was "anti-white propaganda" owing to the casting of a white actor to portray Jamie. The theory alleged that the show was based on the 2024 Southport stabbings, and that depicting the perpetrator as white was an intentional choice to demonise white people. Co-writer Jack Thorne called the claim "ridiculous" and stated that the television series was not based on any real-life events.[32][33][3]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Turner, Laura Jane (10 December 2024). "Shows coming in 2025 that you won't want to miss". Digital Spy. Retrieved 11 December 2024.
  2. ^ Donnelly, Luke (14 March 2025). "Netflix's Adolescence inspired by true story of Croydon girl's murder". My London. Archived from the original on 18 March 2025. Retrieved 18 March 2025. Speaking to the Radio Times (...) said: "Where it came from, for me, is there was an incident in Liverpool, a young girl, and she was stabbed to death by a young boy. I just thought, why? Then there was another young girl in South London who was stabbed to death at a bus stop." Graham cites the tragic death of schoolgirl Elianne Andam, 15, who was killed by Hassan Sentamu after she got off a bus outside the Whitgift Centre
  3. ^ a b "Fact-Check: Is Netflix's "Adolescence" series based on a true story?". Newsweek. 28 March 2025. Retrieved 3 April 2025.
  4. ^ Hogan, Michael (17 March 2025). "'Unnervingly on-the-nose': why Adolescence is such powerful TV that it could save lives". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 17 March 2025. Retrieved 18 March 2025.
  5. ^ a b Youngs, Ian (17 March 2025). "Adolescence: Netflix drama hailed as 'flawless' TV". BBC News. Archived from the original on 17 March 2025. Retrieved 18 March 2025.
  6. ^ Goldbart, Max (14 March 2024). "Netflix UK Scripted Slate: Steven Knight To Pen Guinness Series; Stephen Graham & Jack Thorne Team For Real-Time Crime Drama". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on 23 September 2024. Retrieved 14 March 2024.
  7. ^ Shafer, Ellise (14 March 2024). "Julie Delpy-Suranne Jones Political Series 'The Choice,' Real Estate Show 'Buying London,' Marian Keyes' 'Grown Ups' Adaptation Among Netflix U.K. Commissions". Variety. Retrieved 14 March 2024.
  8. ^ Roxborough, Scott (14 March 2024). "Netflix Orders New Series Starring Jamie Dornan, Mackenzie Davis, Julie Delpy". Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 14 March 2024.
  9. ^ Goldbart, Max (22 July 2024). "Stephen Graham, Erin Doherty & Ashley Walters Board One-Shot Netflix Series 'Adolescence' From 'Boiling Point' Creators, Warp Films & Brad Pitt's Plan B". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved 22 July 2024.
  10. ^ a b c Mangan, Lucy (13 March 2025). "Adolescence review – the closest thing to TV perfection in decades". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 16 March 2025. Retrieved 18 March 2025.
  11. ^ Hall, Rachel (31 March 2025). "Adolescence: drama schools hit out at 'stars from nowhere' narrative". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 April 2025.
  12. ^ Calnan, Ellie (14 August 2024). "2024 film and high-end TV productions shooting in the UK and Ireland: latest updates". Screen Daily. Archived from the original on 7 November 2024. Retrieved 14 August 2024.
  13. ^ Turner, Laura Jane (22 July 2024). "Stephen Graham in first look at new UK-set Netflix crime drama". Digital Spy. Retrieved 22 July 2024.
  14. ^ Hibbs, James (22 July 2024). "Stephen Graham and Ashley Walters lead ambitious Netflix crime drama Adolescence". Radio Times. Retrieved 22 July 2024.
  15. ^ a b Butcher, Sophie (18 March 2025). "How Adolescence's Creators Pulled Off The Most Dizzying TV Feat Of The Year". Empire. Archived from the original on 19 March 2025. Retrieved 19 March 2025.
  16. ^ a b c "Stephen Graham for 'Adolescence'. Conversations at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation. Timestamps 10:02-10:53, 20:03-20:23". SAG-AFTRA Foundation. Youtube. 27 March 2025. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  17. ^ Cumber, Robert (25 July 2024). "Adolescence: New Netflix drama starring Stephen Graham reportedly being filmed in Sheffield". The Star. Retrieved 25 July 2024.
  18. ^ Gannon, Catherine (13 November 2024). "New one-shot Netflix crime drama Adolescence starring Stephen Graham, Ashley Walters and Erin Doherty filmed in South Kirkby, Production Park reveals". Wakefield Express. Retrieved 14 November 2024.
  19. ^ Kellett, Abigail (18 March 2025). "Where was Adolescence filmed? Here are the locations used in new Netflix drama". Wakefield Express. Archived from the original on 18 March 2025. Retrieved 18 March 2025.
  20. ^ Kershaw, Tom (17 March 2025). "Netflix hit Adolescence filming locations after 'major challenge' filming". Yorkshire Examiner. Archived from the original on 18 March 2025. Retrieved 18 March 2025.
  21. ^ a b Youngs, Ian; Mzimba, Lizo (24 March 2025). "Netflix's Adolescence makes UK TV ratings history". BBC News. Retrieved 25 March 2025.
  22. ^ Hailu, Selome (1 April 2025). "'Adolescence' Dethrones 'Stranger Things 3' and 'Bridgerton 2' on Netflix's All Time Most Popular TV List With 96.7 Million Views". Variety. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  23. ^ Gruenwedel, Erik (1 April 2025). "Netflix: British Teen Crime Series 'Adolescence' Remains No. 1 on the Weekly Chart With Nearly 100 Million Views". Media Play News. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  24. ^ "Adolescence: Season 1". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved 1 April 2025.
  25. ^ "Adolescence: Season 1". Metacritic. Retrieved 28 March 2025.
  26. ^ Balial, Nandini (13 March 2025). "Adolescence". RogerEbert.com. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
  27. ^ Singh, Anita (1 March 2025). "Adolescence, Netflix review: Stephen Graham's terrifying drama will chill the blood of any parent". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 1 March 2025. Retrieved 18 March 2025.
  28. ^ "Knowsley MP urges screening of Stephen Graham's "Adolescence" in Parliament and schools".
  29. ^ "Starmer backs campaign to show Adolescence in schools". Sky News. Retrieved 21 March 2025.
  30. ^ Sir Keir Starmer [@Keir_Starmer] (31 March 2025). "As a father, watching Adolescence with my teenage son and daughter hit home hard" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  31. ^ Youngs, Ian (31 March 2025). "Adolescence hard to watch as a dad, Starmer tells creators". BBC. Retrieved 1 April 2025.
  32. ^ "Adolescence writer reacts to 'absurd' race-swapping theory spread by Elon Musk". The Independent. 31 March 2025. Retrieved 1 April 2025.
  33. ^ Nordyke, Kimberly (31 March 2025). "'Adolescence' Co-Creator Responds to Theory About Show Being "Anti-White Propaganda"". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 1 April 2025.
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