David Blake Knox writes: The four-part Netflix series Adolescence has generated a public response that has not been seen in the UK since the 1960s broadcast of the gritty BBC drama Cathy Come Home. That TV production portrayed the corrosive effects of homelessness on one family. The current series revolves around a young boy of thirteen who has murdered an equally young girl from the school they both attended.
This is a very powerful dramatic work and it has had a visceral impact on millions of its viewers. It is extremely well-written and performed. It also features a virtuoso display of both technical and creative direction: each hour-long episode is filmed in a single uninterrupted take. This requires a remarkable degree of skill, precision timing, line retention and, above all, discipline. These demands do not only apply to the central cast and film crew but also to minor characters and even to the non-speaking extras .
Watching events that take place in ‘real time’ adds greatly to the feeling that everything else on screen is also real, and can bring a sense of genuine and unmediated authenticity. But of course that effect can only have been achieved through many painstaking and intense sessions of rehearsal, involving those working both in front of and behind the camera.
The series has received widespread and overwhelming praise – The Guardian described it as ‘absolute perfection’ – and its impact has extended into the political arena. Both Simon Harris and Keir Starmer have recommended that it be made obligatory viewing in schools. In the case of Starmer, he referred to the drama in the House of Commons as a ‘documentary’, which suggests that he may not actually have seen it.
Stephen Graham – who co-wrote and acted the lead adult male role in Adolescence – has said that the series was inspired by several actual cases in which young girls were stabbed to death by young boys. In one of the cases he cited the killing was triggered by a dispute over the ownership of a teddy bear – which may help to explain why the closing moments of Adolescence also feature a child’s teddy bear.
In that original case, the boy-murderer came from a family which had emigrated to the UK from Africa when he was just three years old. He was later sent back to a boys’ boarding school in Uganda, where it seems that he was persistently and sadistically bullied. His father was charged in the UK with domestic abuse of the boy’s mother, and, from an early age, the boy grew up without his father living at home. His mother later informed the UK social services that she felt unable to look after her son and he was taken into care.
Given that unstable and dislocated background, it is, perhaps, not surprising that this boy had a long history of self-harm, mental illness, suicidal ideation and physical violence. His aggression was not only directed towards young girls: indeed, while in custody and charged with murder, he attacked and threatened to kill a younger boy who was also being held on remand.
This disturbed background conforms to what we know of the personal history of many convicted killers. An analysis of global homicides that was recently published by the United Nations identified a number of features that are shared by most murderers. One of these is gender: over 90 per cent of all murders worldwide are committed by men. However, more than 80 per cent of their victims are also men. Murderers in the UK are much more likely to have come from lone-parent households in which the father was absent, and disproportionate numbers of the men who commit homicide also come from economically deprived backgrounds.
In other words, some of the recurring features of male murderers involve issues of social class, family stability and psychological disturbance. The latter is evident in the UK statistics which reveal that, on average, around 10 per cent of the women who are murdered every year have been killed by their own sons.
In interviews that he has given since the launch of the series, Stephen Graham has suggested that the murder of young girls by young boys has been on the increase: indeed, he has implied that this has reached near-epidemic proportions in the UK. In reality, the rates of all female homicides in the UK have fallen over the last ten years. The most common murderers of young girls under sixteen are not boys of a comparable age but an adult male – usually a parent or step-parent. Although the incidents of murders and assaults in which knives are used have increased over the past ten years, that violence is primarily directed by boys and young men against other males.
Given this context, the changes that Graham made to the real-life cases that inspired him might seem revealing and significant. The family in his TV series is composed of two active and concerned parents who are shown to have a close and loving relationship with each other. Far from being rooted in an impoverished stratum of society, the father in this family owns his own business and there is no suggestion in the series of any financial hardship or pressure.
This was a deliberate decision by Graham, who has said that he wanted to create a narrative in which the parents of a child who has committed murder were clearly seen not to be responsible for his crime. ‘I thought to myself, “What if it’s not the parents?’”, he told one journalist. ‘I wanted the dad to be a hardworking man. I didn’t want him to be a violent dad who would raise his hand to his children. It’s the same for the mum too: we imagined her as a manager for John Lewis (the department store.) I thought let’s take all of those common denominators away from the table.’
But, by taking those ‘common denominators’ off the table, Graham has focused his drama on a murder that is – by his own reckoning – not typical of the homicides that occur every year in the UK. Despite that, the series has been treated by some journalists and politicians as if it provided the missing key to an objective understanding of such heinous crimes. Perhaps, the series has itself encouraged that perception: even its title suggests a common experience shared by adolescent boys throughout the UK – and, perhaps, elsewhere too.
The young boy who is at the centre of Graham’s drama has had no previous history of physical violence, substance abuse, mental illness, suicidal impulses or unduly disruptive behaviour – all of which are common in both child and adult murderers. Although the boy appears to have a low opinion of himself – at least, as far as his attractiveness to girls is concerned – he seems to be very close to his father and consistently depends on him for emotional support.
By Graham’s own estimate then, the boy in this drama is not a typical young murderer. Of course, that is not necessarily a bad thing and the series should not be analysed or judged in strictly literal terms. However, the only substantive explanation offered to explain this young boy’s murder of a young girl is the malign influence of the Internet. In particular, the inspiration for this crime is directly related in one episode to the person of Andrew Tate. He is mentioned by name and described as spreading the sort of misogynistic ‘shite’ that can lead boys and young men to commit acts of violence against young girls and women.
Tate may be a loathsome individual, but he represents a kind of Demon King in the scenario of this drama. Essentially, he serves as a dramatic device that operates as a deus ex machina: an off-screen and apparently powerful figure who can seem to resolve the fundamental question that lies at the heart of this drama: why should a child from such a stable and supportive family become a killer? The explanation offered – blame the Internet – may be convenient in dramatic terms, but for me it lacks any real credibility outside the TV series.
The fear experienced in some families – that children are being led astray by influences beyond parental control – is as old as the hills. Sometimes those anxieties are justified; sometimes not so much. Back in the 1960s, the Rolling Stones were believed by some parents to be – literally – Satanic in their ability to corrupt young and impressionable minds. At that time, some adults felt that their children needed to be ‘rescued’ from such baleful influencers. Nowadays Mick Jagger is honoured in his own country as a knight of the realm.
I am not suggesting that the repellent views of Andrew Tate will ever follow a similar path to respectability. (Although, fifty or so years ago, Sir Mick’s views of women were not a millions miles away from those of Tate: Jagger did, after all, write the deeply misogynistic lyrics for ‘Under My Thumb’ and ‘Brown Sugar’.) Nor am I suggesting that free access to the Internet does not raise real and serious concerns – for parents and non-parents alike, and for democratic societies as a whole.
However, there are clear dangers in attributing excessive – and almost occult – abilities to the person of Andrew Tate. In this context, it may also be significant that Tate has leaned into the publicity that has further accrued to him as a result of this drama. It is also dangerous to draw far-reaching conclusions from the type of fictional scenario that is presented by Adolescence. Overestimating the damaging influence of the Internet – and allowing a kind of moral panic to take root – may prove in the long run to be just as short-sighted as underestimating its power.
2/4/2025
