**Adolescence spoilers incoming **
Welcome to ‘Showtime with Emily Maddick’, in which GLAMOUR'S Assistant Editor and Entertainment Director brings a unique perspective to the month's most hyped film or TV show. For March’s instalment, Emily reviews Adolescence the new four part crime-drama from Netflix. This powerful and terrifying show, from Peaky Blinders' Stephen Graham, focuses on the story of a 13-year-old boy who is arrested and accused of stabbing a school girl to death. Despite being fiction, the show raises important real life themes of toxic masculinity and its impact on the current epidemic of violence against women and girls. And Emily points out that it is image-based abuse that is at the heart of this tragic story, which serves to highlight the importance of GLAMOUR's campaigning of the government to make a comprehensive image-based abuse law a reality.
There’s a moment in the final episode of Adolescence when Stephen Graham’s character Eddie and his wife Manda (Christine Tremarco) are reminiscing about a school disco in the 80s, when they first got together as teenagers. It comes much to the squirming embarrassment of their 17-year-old daughter, Lisa (Amelie Pease), who is with them, riding in the front of her Dad’s van. Eddie forces Lisa to listen to Aha’s Take on Me, while he regales how he, playing the fool, wore a pink wig to try and impress her mum before falling flat on his face on the dance floor. He then recalls walking his future wife home, holding her hand all the way, before she ‘snogged his face off’ outside her parents' house.
This nostalgic tale of teenage romance is in stark, deliberate and heartbreakingly poignant contrast to a scene from the previous episode. We see Eddie and Manda’s 13-year-old son, Jamie – who is in police custody awaiting trial accused of the murder his classmate Katie – being questioned by his psychiatrist (Erin Doherty). Jamie (in an astonishing debut performance from 14-year-old Owen Cooper) reveals that just weeks before Katie’s death, he had plucked up the courage to ask her to go on a date to the local funfair. Another familiar moment of seemingly innocent teenage romance, but one that was to have a horrifying consequence. For we learn that it was Katie’s subsequent rejection and mockery of Jamie that ultimately led to her being stabbed seven times to death in a car park – the crime Jamie now stands accused of.
Much has been written about how Adolescence, the brainchild of Peaky Blinders and This is England star Stephen Graham and Joy writer Jack Thorne, is every parent’s worst nightmare. But given the real life topics that are so deftly covered – the radicalisation of young boys in the manosphere and incel culture, bullying, social media-fuelled misogyny and the current epidemic of violence against women and girls – it is a wake up call for everyone, parent or not.
Millions of men in England and Wales pose a danger to women and children, according to the commissioner of the Metropolitan police.
Adolescence really is one of the most uncomfortable and frightening pieces of television I’ve seen in years. It will haunt you for a long time afterwards, such is its power to bring to light the real world modern dangers young girls and boys are facing today.
And it couldn’t be more timely. With 3,000 offences recorded each day and one in every 12 women predicted to be a victim, the scale of the epidemic is deepening in the UK.
Graham has spoken of what motivated him to create this drama. “There’s an epidemic of knife crime amongst young, young lads… up and down the country” he said. “There were certain incidents that really stuck out where young boys — and they are young boys, they’re not men, their brains aren’t fully formed yet, hence the title — were killing young girls,” he explained. “One day, it just really hit my heart. I just thought: What’s happening? Why is this the case? What’s going on with our society as a whole, as a collective?”
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He added: “We could have made a drama about gangs and knife crime or about a kid whose mother is an alcoholic or whose father is a violent abuser… instead, we wanted you to look at this family and think, ‘My god. This could be happening to us!’"
What makes the show even more arresting – and also distinguishes it from other crime-dramas – is the format. Each episode is filmed in a single continuous shot, like Graham’s previously acclaimed 2021 film, Boiling Point. This has the effect of making the action seem immersive and exactly like you are experiencing it in real time. It also makes the viewing experience hyper intense.
Gender-based violence is not inevitable.
Back to episode three, which is set almost entirely in the questioning room of the teenage mental facility that Jamie is being held in. The only two characters to really feature with any prominence in this episode are Jamie and his psychiatrist, Briony. Their interaction is mesmerising, dangerous, but also tender and even humorous at times. But for me, one of the most interesting elements of it was when Jamie reveals to Briony that the reason he found the courage to ask Katie out was because he perceived her as ‘weak’ and vulnerable because a nude image of her chest had been being circulated amongst all the boys at their school. Jamie tells how Katie had initially sent the image to a boy, “Fidget”, who she fancied, who had then circulated it amongst his peers on snapchat – without her consent.
GLAMOUR is currently campaigning the government to introduce a comprehensive image-based abuse law. And while there are many other factors at play in the harrowing story of Adolescence, it’s hard to ignore that image-based abuse is one of the key storylines in setting off the chain of horrendous events that resulted in a teenage girl’s murder. And, as evidenced by the statistics (see above), this stuff is real. Which is why Adolescence is such a powerful and important piece of television.
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It’s something that one of the show’s stars, Erin Doherty, also highlights. I interviewed Erin earlier this week and she spoke to me about the importance of legislating on image-based abuse.
“[The show] leans into the blurred lines of consent and technology, and actually those rules should apply regardless,” she said. “It's awful that we've had to get to this point to be having these conversations. But in a way, the fact that we are now filling in those gaps is hopeful. It's so heartbreaking that there were people who fell through. But now that we are clocking it, we have to, as I say, have the conversations, hold ourselves accountable, go, okay, well, then this needs to be against the law. There have been blind spots that we need to now address immediately.” I couldn’t agree more, Erin.
GLAMOUR is campaigning for the government to introduce an Image-Based Abuse Bill in partnership with Jodie Campaigns, the End Violence Against Women Coalition, Not Your Porn, and Professor Clare McGlynn.
Revenge Porn Helpline provides advice, guidance and support to victims of intimate image-based abuse over the age of 18 who live in the UK. You can call them on 0345 6000 459.
The Cyber Helpline provides free, expert help and advice to people targeted by online crime and harm in the UK and USA.
For more from GLAMOUR's Assistant Editor and Entertainment Director, Emily Maddick, follow her on Instagram @emilymaddick.
Adolescence is streaming on Netflix now.
