Netflix’s logline describes Adolescence as every “parent’s worst nightmare” but the show’s creators want parents to wake up to the true stories that inspired the show’s harrowing plot.
The British series, which rapidly became Netflix’s top-charting TV show within a week of its release, wastes no time in setting the scene. When 13-year-old Jamie is arrested for stabbing a girl in his class to death, his parents and community desperately search for answers. What unfolds across the rest of the four-part series is one of the greatest examinations of incel culture, the manosphere, and male violence against women TV has seen to date. But is it real?
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Is ‘Adolescence’ a True Story?
Though Jamie’s story isn’t based on one singular case, Adolescence is the true story of many millions of women and girls who have experienced violence at the hands of men and boys.
Per a 2024 report from the United Nations, an estimated 736 million women — almost one in three — have been subjected to violence, physical and/or sexual, or both, at least once in their lifetime. This coupled with the rise in knife crime in the UK inspired Adolescence creators Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham to unpack how this male violence comes to be.
“There was an incident where a young boy [allegedly] stabbed a girl,” Graham, who also plays Jamie’s dad in the show, told Netflix’s Tudum of the true story behind the fictional show. “It shocked me. I was thinking, ‘What’s going on? What’s happening in society where a boy stabs a girl to death? What’s the inciting incident here?’ And then it happened again, and it happened again, and it happened again. I really just wanted to shine a light on it, and ask, ‘Why is this happening today? What’s going on? How have we come to this?’”
Jamie, played by Owen Cooper, might not be a real kid in the literal sense but, to Thorne and Graham, he is a demonstration of what is happening to young men who are becoming exposed to the manosphere online.
“One of our aims was to ask, ‘What is happening to our young men these days, and what are the pressures they face from their peers, from the internet and from social media?’” Graham told Tudum. “And the pressures that come from all of those things are as difficult for kids [in the UK] as they are the world over.”
On March 13, the day Adolescence premiered on Netflix, a teenage boy was sentenced to 23 years in prison for stabbing a 15-year-old girl to death in London in 2023. In the US, a similar case in Florida made headlines back in 2023 when a teen boy was sentenced to life in prison for stabbing a 13-year-old girl to death before bragging about it on Snapchat.
Adolescence‘s creators have been emphatic about wanting their show to provoke change and put an end to cases like these.
“I want it to be shown in schools, I want it to be shown in Parliament. It’s crucial because this is only going to get worse,” Thorne told the BBC on March 18. “It’s something that people need to be talking about – hopefully, that’s what drama can do.”
Who Were the Inspiration for Jamie’s Parents in Adolescence?
When it came to writing and playing Jamie’s father in the show, Graham says he drew from his own reaction to knife crimes and forced himself to question his assumptions.
“Without being disrespectful, when these things are on the news… you blame the family, we blame the mom and dad. We’re all guilty of it,” Graham told The Hollywood Reporter in a March 11 interview. But, as he separately told Rolling Stone UK, challenging that assumption led him to Jamie’s parents.
“I thought to myself, ‘What if it’s not the parents?’ I wanted the dad to be a hardworking man, the kind of man that I was brought up with, like my uncles and my dad,” he said. “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.”
“Let’s take all of those normal common denominators away from the table, and let’s just concentrate on something that’s happened with the boy here,” Graham said.
As the father of a teenage daughter and a teenage son, the subject matter hits home for Graham. “You just can’t tell what they’re doing in their rooms some days, do you know what I mean?” Graham added to Rolling Stone UK. “It was just about looking at the influence that certain people can have upon our children without our knowledge.”
So What’s Real in Adolescence?
Despite not centering on one singular incident or one factual teenage boy, there are a lot of painfully real elements in Adolescence.
Outside of the portrayal of knife attacks, which have almost doubled in England and Wales over the past decade according to the Office for National Statistics, Adolescence confronts the rising impact of online spaces that promote hatred and subordination of women while espousing notions of masculinity rooted in violence and superiority.
In one scene, the show turns the mirror back on the real world outside of the show’s fictional plot by name-dropping far-right influencer Andrew Tate. A detective mentions Tate when he questions whether incel culture might be to blame for Katie’s murder.
Online, Tate’s fans have flocked to defend the self-proclaimed misogynist who gained millions of social media followers by promoting violence against women.
Graham is keenly aware of the impact of men like Tate. He told Rolling Stone UK that even he has been served social media videos of men sharing anti-women views. “I was able to say ‘Yeah, that’s not for me,’ but what if I was a 13-year-old boy who didn’t really have an ideal relationship with my father, and all of a sudden I’m seeing this man who has everything I aspire to have — a fancy car and loads of money — this man who is everything I, maybe, aspire to be.”
With critics lauding the show and, in particular, Graham and Cooper’s performances, Adolescence is more than just a gripping watch. It’s the kind of thing that will kick parents into action.
Before you go, click here to see must-see movies for teens.
