“My home is in my head.” — Bob Marley
When I was a kid, a friend asked me if he should ask who many considered the most popular girl in our class to the school dance. He transparently framed it as a “status play.”
I advised him not to; not to deter him from rejection, or because I suspected he didn’t fancy her as much as the thought of what “cool points” he could earn as a result.
Even back then, I knew the online hazing he would be due if his bold, albeit misguided, inquiry failed to go through would be absolutely unending—and ego-crush him more than any literal gut punch would.
A dozen years later, character actor Stephen Graham (“The Irishman,” “Boardwalk Empire”) has delivered“Adolescence,” a triumph in every sense. With socio-political ramifications, the British crime-drama tackles the pressure put on young boys to pursue young women, and the pressure put on young women to turn them down.
With “Birdman” and “True Detective: Episode 4”-esque one-shot sequencing, audiences experience each episode without any cuts away from the narrative intensity.
We first see the trauma-coded, early morning arrest of an ostensibly harmless 13-year-old boy named Jamie—who is accused of killing a female classmate.
As the investigation unfolds in real-time, we quickly realize looks are not what they seem in the slightest. This initially calls Edward Norton’s “Primal Fear” defendant to mind, before "Adolescence" appropriately abandons the viewer’s split personality-assuming hunches.
The miniseries wields a wide-reaching thematic familiarity to complement its unique structure. Thorough as they may be, the adequately-trained adult detectives are babes in the woods when it comes to clocking coded Instagram messaging that can trigger a chain of tragic misfortune if unchecked in advance.
For American viewers, “Adolescence” reads as relevant amidst the school shooting epidemic. In the UK–and elsewhere—there is no such phenomenon. But “knifing” has increased in the region, inspiring Graham, his co-creator Jack Thorne, and his “Boiling Point” collaborator, director Philip Barantini, to comment on such and other modern issues.
One major talking point layered into the DNA of the “Adolescence” teleplay: the influence of feminism-resistant public figures like Andrew Tate on molding “incel” label-fearing boys with hyper-masculine rhetoric, and faultily so with violently-charged fervor.
Before they even earn the chance to embrace what constitutes actual manhood in the purest sense, boys may fall partial to the path of Jamie.
Let the therapy session-framed episode 3—shot first, and impressively the first time newcomer Owen Cooper, who plays Jamie, ever set foot on a set—tell you all you need to know about the madness that can consume an impressionable child's still developing mind.
Fair warning: expect your heart to pound with no musical assistance from The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” by the time you’re through with this latest reminder that the kids are most definitely not alright.