Netflix’s One-Take Drama ‘Adolescence’ Is a Gutting Account of Murder, Misogyny and Teen Fragility: TV Review – Variety

By

Aramide Tinubu

Misogyny is a part of the fabric of our culture, and a patriarchal society like the one we live in depends on deep-seated and widespread contempt for women to sustain its structure. Created by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham, Netflix‘s latest limited series, “Adolescence,” is a chilling examination of murder and toxic masculinity. Though the subject matter is entirely different, this series will undoubtedly be compared to Netflix’s “Baby Reindeer,” which debuted to thunderous acclaim last year, and swept the Emmys as well as other awards. Gutting, raw and stunningly acted, “Adolescence” highlights how we’ve failed ourselves and will continually fail the generations coming behind us. 

Helmed by director Philip Barantini, who uses his signature one-shot style throughout all four episodes, “Adolescence” opens in an unnamed Northern English town in the early morning. Detective Inspector Luke Bascombe (Ashley Walters) and his partner, Detective Sargent Misha Frank (Faye Marsay), chat in the car in a suburban community. Though the duo’s conversation is light and airy, the tone shifts as they suddenly speed toward a nondescript home. With a SWAT team flanking them, the duo and their comrades burst into the house, catching the Miller family, who is just starting the day off guard. 

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As the father, Eddie Miller (an incredible Graham), stands startled on the stairs, his hands raised above his head, the officers ask for his son, 13-year-old Jamie (Owen Cooper). Eddie’s wife, Manda (Christine Tremarco), clothed only in a bathrobe, begins shrieking in despair. On the second floor, the police ask the couple’s teen daughter, Lisa (Amelie Pease), who is exiting the bathroom, to lie flat on the ground. Then, Bascombe and his team go barreling in another room, rousing Jamie awake and informing him he’s being arrested under suspicion of murder. From there, “Adolescence” is off to the races. 
Following Jamie’s arrest (though he’s never handcuffed), he weeps in the police van for his father and is taken to the precinct, where he is booked and placed in a cell alone. The Millers arrive shortly after their son in a flurry of confusion and disbelief. The couple is confident this has all been a grave error. Throughout the grim and unrelenting first episode, the audience walks through the entire morning, which begins just before 6:00 am and ends around 7:12 am, when Jamie’s interview with Bascombe, Frank, his assigned lawyer Paul Bellow (Mark Stanley) and Eddie, who acts as his son’s appropriate adult, concludes. 

Episode 2 is set the following day, and focuses on Detectives Bascombe and Frank as they head to the school Jamie and the victim attended. Moving throughout the campus, stopping in classes and interviewing students and administration, it’s clear how this horrendous crime has affected everyone. The school is brimming with an unnerving tension that the teachers and administration can’t seem to temper. Moreover, the teens themselves are frustrating. Their inability and unwillingness to speak openly to adults showcase the fragility of young minds and how little we know about communicating effectively with adolescents. 
While the entire series is profound, Episode 3, which takes place seven months after Episode 1, is exceptional. Now locked away at a juvenile detention center as he awaits his day in court, Jamie has seemingly adjusted to his new circumstances. On this particular day, he’s delighted by the arrival of Briony Ariston (Erin Doherty reuniting with Graham and Walters from Hulu’s “A Thousand Blows”), a child psychologist working to assess his mental state and present her findings to a judge. 
Viewers watch Briony enter the facility and grab a hot chocolate for Jamie before sitting across from him in what appears to be a large classroom. For his part, Jamie looks as he did when he first appeared on the screen: quiet and unassuming, a boy who doesn’t quite seem aware of the circumstances he’s created for himself.
However, the air shifts as Briony begins asking him pointed questions about masculinity, friendships and his sexual relationships. As the teen grows increasingly agitated by Briony’s questioning, desperate to take charge of the conversation, the camera pans around the pair, giving the audience a feeling of cage-like entrapment. The acting is breathtaking. As Jamie becomes enraged, allowing the most monstrous aspects of himself to spring forth, Briony attempts to temper her fears and emotions. It is a nearly unbearable intensity that unveils so much about how Jamie sees women and why his classmate was brutally murdered.  
Dark and brilliantly written, this show unpacks the complexities of humanity and manhood and how the rise of the manosphere has so eerily and quickly permeated itself into the lives of young people through social media. While the Millers’ negligence of Jamie certainly isn’t overt, it’s clear that real guardrails are needed for teens because, left to their own devices, things can quickly become nightmarish. 

The four episodes of “Adolescence” premiere on March 13 on Netflix.
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Source: https://variety.com/2025/tv/reviews/adolescence-review-netflix-1236334549/