Netflix’s Adolescence has taken the Internet by storm and with good reason. Created by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham and directed by Philip Barantini, this mini-series reached 114.5 million viewers in less than a month since its release.
After watching it, I understand why: strong and emotion-packed storytelling with great characters and tightly built suspense. Adolescence is crime fiction at its best, albeit inspired by teenage stabbings in the past years in the UK. In this month’s story lab, I’ll unpick the building blocks behind this brilliant piece of storytelling and its smashing success. There’s a lot to love, starting with brilliant filming and superb acting.
So, if you haven’t seen the series or you don’t like spoilers, then bookmark this blog post for after you’ve seen it.
1. The story & characters
The main narrative follows thirteen-year-old Jamie Miller, who is accused of killing his classmate, Katie Leonard. Four episodes span from Jamie’s arrest to after his conviction. The first three episodes focus on Jamie’s crime, his motive and the wider social context, while the last episode shows the aftermath for Jamie’s family.
Each episode zooms in to a different aspect of the story and introduces side characters, but the main narrative revolves around Jamie. It starts with his arrest. We follow him from being accused of the crime to his incarceration (offscreen). He’s only a boy, who looks so small and vulnerable that we don’t want to believe he’s committed a murder.Each episode adds another layer that pulls the reader deeper into Jamie’s world, gradually unveiling the more troubled aspects of his character, the motives behind his crime and the wider context.
The third episode features an interview with a psychologist. What starts as a friendly chat between Jamie and his second psychologist turns into an unsettling outburst that unmasks Jamie’s lack of confidence and his underlying anger. We see a different side of Jamie and begin to understand the origins of that anger. This adds a deeper layer of understanding of the events and circumstances that led up to the murder.
The miniseries closes with Jamie’s family on his father’s 50th birthday. The family are being shunned by their community and neighbours. While their son is in prison, they need to find a way to cope with the aftermath, while their world continues to unravel.
The main storyline is clear, yet complex. It unpicks a gruesome crime without offering straightforward answers or solutions. Instead, it asks questions and lets them ring in our ears. It presents the evidence and lets the viewer construct their own picture.
This is storytelling at its best.
2. The context and subtext
One of the biggest successes of the miniseries is how brilliantly it roots the story within the wider social and cultural context. Albeit fiction, the story is inspired by the alarming rate of actual stabbings committed by teenagers in the UK in the past few years. I remember reading about those crimes and wondering what was going on.
While the four episodes don’t provide an exact answer, they dive deeper into the context: bullying with long-lasting effects, teenage angst, lack of confidence and need for love and acceptance, and the Internet with its endless stream of easy answers to troubled questions. The manosphere offers Jamie a temporary outlet for his anger and frustrations. Alas, empathy is weaponised to radicalise him.
In the final episode, Jamie’s parents talk about Jamie always being in his room on his computer until the small hours of the morning. ‘We thought he was safe,’ Eddie says. It’s this sentence that unnerved many parents. If they’re not able to protect their children when they’re alone in their rooms, then who is?
The storyline makes it clear that Jamie grew up in a loving family. Eddie works a lot and has less time to spend with his kids than he’d like. He has a temper, but there’s no indication of physical violence from his side. Jamie clearly loves his dad and is very protective of him during the psychological evaluation.
What makes the subtext of Adolescence so powerful is that it touches upon the biggest fears and issues of our time. Screens and the Internet are so integrated into our daily lives that it’s almost impossible to do without them. If the algorithms give you more of what you like, then how do you know when you’ve entered a rabbit hole?
It’s impossible not to think that this could have happened to someone you care about. Adolescence exposes silence as a place of faux safety, one that can serve as a cover to breed violence. The red flags have become transparent. The institutions we relied on can no longer ensure safety.
In short, Adolescence speaks volumes through subtext, bringing together the major issues of our times. This makes it all but impossible to see it as yet another story. It might be fiction, but it’s so close to life that it demands that the viewer step away from the sidelines.
3. The emotion
Each episode is filmed in one continuous shot, which brings us into the same reality as the characters, so we see the story unfold in real time. We’re feeling what the characters are feeling, anticipating with them and getting close enough to feel we’re inside their heads. Because the viewer is almost in the story, holding their breath with the characters, it’s impossible to look away. We need to know what happened and understand why.
The brilliant actors allow us to step into their shoes and feel with them. And boy, do we feel: an entire rollercoaster of emotions. This adds to the story’s depth and gets us emotionally invested in what’s going on.
The first episode gets the viewer from the terror of the arrest to confusion and compassion with Jamie’s family. Jamie and his father, Eddie, get a moment alone at the police station. We’re still not sure what has happened and whether Jamie is innocent or guilty of murder, but it’s clear that Eddie doesn’t believe he did it. We want him to be right. When Eddie asks Jamie if he’s done it, Jamie pauses, then shakes his head and promises he didn’t. Later, the police officers return and show the CCTV footage that proves Jamie stabbed Katie to death in a parking lot. We’re left stunned.
The third episode is packed with suspense and we can sense the psychologist’s discomfort escalating to fear. In the last episode, there’s the full complexity of emotions as Jamie’s parents and sister attempt to celebrate Eddie’s fiftieth birthday. An attempt at joy is mixed with anger, anxiety, sadness, love, hope and doubt, which paints a vivid picture of the family’s present and near future.
Eddie’s van has been vandalised. As the family tries to fix it and reclaim the day, the community won’t let them look away from Jamie’s crime. Jamie calls to congratulate Eddie on his birthday and says that he’s changing his plea to guilty. This brings undeniable relief tinged with sadness.
Chillingly, a worker in a DIY store tells Eddie he’s on Jamie’s side. They go back home, but there, too, there’s no escaping Jamie. In a heartbreaking closing, Eddie tucks in Jamie’s teddy bear and says ‘I’m sorry, son. I should’ve done better.’
The ending offers no catharsis, only a lingering question: could it have been prevented? The series leaves us with raw emotion and questions we’re afraid to answer.
4. The genre
The miniseries thrives on suspense and combines several genres from classic mystery to psychological thriller. The genre blend carries the story through a powerful dramatic arc, borrowing the necessary elements from various subgenres of crime fiction.
The first episode presents a strong mystery element, posing the question: did Jamie kill Katie? Throughout the series, Jamie keeps denying any wrongdoing, but the ending of episode one provides undeniable proof: he has done it. Jamie stabbed Katie Miller to death.
The second episode follows the mystery and answers the question: why did he do it? The two police officers talk to Jamie’s schoolmates and learn about the tension between Jamie and Katie. The police officer’s son tells him about a secret language in which a heart emoji isn’t just a heart emoji. Between bullying and lack of confidence, we get a picture of the circumstances that led Jamie to retreat into the manosphere.
The third episode is full-on psychological suspense, in which Jamie opens up to the psychologist, but not in the ways we’d expect him to. The why he did it gets an additional layer that leaves no doubt about what has happened.
The final episode brings a refreshing ending to the crime genre. If the usual crime series ends with a trial or a conviction, Adolescence leaves that part out altogether. Instead, it shows the bits of the story we rarely get to see, those that show the echoes of Jamie’s crime in the lives of those closest to him.
All in all, Adolescence is a strong piece of genre fiction that builds its storyline on well-developed characters whose goals and motivations unfold throughout the story, allowing the viewer to understand them. Its main power lies in its emotional impact, which cuts so close to the bone that it’s almost impossible not to think or talk about it. All of this makes Adolescence a keystone story of our time.
