So what did the Adolescence psychologist’s report state?

Id have been happy with one or two more episodes. They obviously left certain things ambiguous on purpose?

This is really interesting, because watching episode 4 I cycled between the dad as a normal bloke trying to do the best for his family under awful pressure and circumstances. And him as emotionally illiterate, misogynistic, abusive man, having a proportion (not all) of direct responsibility for Jamie's behaviour.

Him feeling anger to what was going on in episode 4 would be normal. But it was his actions that were not acceptable (assaulting and threatening the teenage boy, throwing paint over his van) He was out of control then. And at that point he didn't acknowledge it, neither did the wife or daughter. A one off out of character loosing control, and apologising afterwards is one thing. But in a larger context of the dad's (and family's) thoughts and behaviours it's something else.

A lot of the points I raised earlier were about him and the family before Jamie killed Katy. So this was dad without the awful pressure. The way mum and daughter managed his emotions would have been a long held pattern.

And it's not just the dad we're talking about. Why was the mum so passive/absent? She bares responsibility too. She could have advocated for Jamie and helped him to feel comfortable in his own skin. "Stop making him do football, he doesn't like it, I've found a drawing class for him" Or"Jamie I expect you home at 7pm tonight we're going to watch a film and eat popcorn"

I disagree - I think being able to hold it together and then have an appropriate emotional response after the client has gone is a positive sign. Once you become hardened to the job and don't feel your feelings you lose all sense of nuance or the ability to see clients as individuals. It's vital that psychologists see clients as human people, rather than a set of symptoms or behaviours or trauma responses otherwise assessment becomes a tick-box exercise. A good psychologist will have a full range of human responses, but also the control to not express them in front of a client, and bloody good clinical supervision to unpack them and debrief afterwards.

The last thing a child in such a desperate situation needs is someone who has lost the ability to access their own empathy

I thought that was about their solid relationship but also his volatile temper.

Its not the anger and upset, which are obviously understandable. It's the more subtle indications of how a man was treated in that family. Eddie was clearly in charge, with his wife and daughter deferring to him, and showing quite a lot of nervous fawning, calming and trying to please him. That his word was law was clear in the way he shouted at his wife, right in her face, when she suggested they move, for example. Eddie wasn't 'toxic' by himself, its the household dynamic he and Mand had created together, and had learned from their own upbringing and traditional roles in society that was toxic. As PP said, when Jamie wasn't the sort of male to command that level of subservience and adoration from girls himself it was a problem for him in a way it may not have been if he hadn't grown up with that role modelling.

It's not that simplistic.

It conveyed incredibly well how the Dad who had a traumatic childhood was trying his best to fulfill his own role in the family, but wasn't equipped to deal with Jamie when he didn't fit the idea of his son. He didn't really know Jamie, he knew the son he expected to have.

I can absolutely recognise so much of it in the attitudes that DP has received from his upbringing. He's a good parent now but before our son was born he had a pretty stereotypical idea of who he would be and what hobbies he would have. DP had to unlearn all of that.

Now my boy is on his PC a lot, but not keen on social media so I think he's alright. But I've certainly been triggered out of any complacency with it.

I think that he was trying, sure, but he was failing due to his own abusive upbringing. His normal reaction to stress is clearly violence and explosive anger. He's perpetuating the cycle even though he isn't hitting his wife and children - it's still abusive.

He smashed up a shed before in anger. His wife is fearful, but doesn't seem shocked, at his outburst and both she and their daughter are clearly well practised in placating his temper. Jamie immediately accuses Briony of coming after his dad, rather than saying nice things about him (because on some level he knows that he's explosive).

Yes, of course he was under high stress, but the issue is that his stress is displayed and managed through violent outbursts (smashing the shed, chasing and manhandling the teen himself rather than calling the police, wrecking his own van) - it's more of the same, not an exception. That's why they mention the shed in the first place. If they hadn't, then it could have been written off as the stress of the situation. That kind of behaviour goes beyond what is, or should ever be, normal.

His temper, insistence on being "masculine", and the dynamic in the family, is what opens the door to the internet radicalisation, which would have been much less likely if Jamie was comfortable in who he was, didn't see violence as normal, didn't see just rigid gender roles where the women obeyed the men and were subservient as normal, and didn't have an emotionally unavailable father.

It isn't one or the other. It's the combination that is important.

Has anyone who's watched it with a similarly aged child found this positive? How does the dc react to it - what is it going to make them think about themselves?

@GoneOffTheRails I agree with you, and I think the last episode distracted from the issue of men with an agenda grooming and radicalising children using gaming and the internet.
Thats the problem society is facing here and now. Its a new problem and no one is asking what their agenda is or how the hell we tackle it.

I think the reaction to the dad is overblown.

He was the one who saw the CCTV of his son murdering a girl, he was the one in the room with him when he was being questioned. He had his own plumbing business which was being targeted by vandals and his son was being locked up. What happened was all over social media and no doubt his business was also being hit financially.

But people are saying it’s his fault because he has a bad temper and anger issues. How do people expect him to react to having his work van vandalised and be accused of being a nonce? Or is any show of anger or frustration from a man considered “toxic” now?

I thought it showed he was trying to do the right things for his family.

I thought the security guard was very creepy, and clearly made the psychologist feel uncomfortable. Pushy, trying to undermine her, inserting himself into her personal space, hovering behind her and whispering in her ear… As if he was a different version of the boy in custody. Overreaching, seeking her approval, using his physical presence to make her notice him. So she was under pressure to be calm and patient during a difficult task in both those rooms, with a male trying to win her over, interfere with her work or intimidate her. No wonder she was shaky by the end of it.

Ironically, I feel that there was still too much emphasis on the males. I know this is about a boy committing an awful crime but the female characters were all a bit caricature for me. The Mum and Daughter, as someone has said, placating the dad. The best friend shown as a bit troubled and acting out. And barely a single thing about the victim. There was just no proper representation of how this affects women and girls

I've just posted this on another thread, but I think this was a very deliberate choice and probably the right one. It's why they acknowledged the fact that most reports and dramas focus on the man while the victim is forgotten in episode 2. The manosphere attracts disillusioned boys. One of the reasons boys, and particularly white boys, feel disillusioned and attracted to Andrew Tate and the manosphere is that they feels like they aren't centred in anything - in part because there is such an upsurge in representation for women, LGBT+, and racial discrimination and violence etc ("when you're privileged, equality feels like discrimination"). There's a reason the time "International Men's Day" is most searched on google is on International Women's Day! If they want to get the message through to boys and men (and parents of boys) that these attitudes are damaging and insidious then it needs to focus on them, otherwise it's relying on empathy to explain why it's an issue and the focus becomes "don't do this because it's harmful to girls". It would be great if that message worked but, frankly, it doesn't, because boys and men with the red pill attitude already see women as lesser and they don't care - that's why they do these things. They need to see why attitudes like this are bad for them too and how easily they can arise.

I think the impact on girls and women of societal attitudes like this deserves a full series on its own to explore all of the events in the run up covering the impact on them of her death, but also Katie's life. Why did Katie send topless photos? How did it impact her having them sent around? What were school doing about it? What was the behaviour of Ryan and Jamie like towards the girls to cause such fury in Jade that she knew he was involved? How involved were her parents in monitoring her social media usage? It's the same sort of message - do you actually know what it going on in your child's life under the surface, are you keeping them safe from harm and radical ideology, and how as parents are your attitudes and behaviours putting your children at risk? Definitely enough for a 4 part series with a really important message.

I didn't read the daughter's behaviour as a sign that she was lovely at all.

I saw a teenage girl working desperately hard to manage her parent's emotions, particularly her father's, by being overly calm and nice and good. When she rallied them at the end, it just made me feel a bit ill. Been there, got that t-shirt. Parentification/codependency at work.

I think it showed, albeit subtly, that the two children had had very different responses to growing up in a household with an angry man.

I particularly loved the character of his sister Lisa. She was so overlooked but her response was to ever such a good girl. They were so busy congratulating themselves on how well they had done with her, they never once asked her if she was ok - because clearly she wasn't and she would have been destroyed by the whole thing.

She works so hard to match whatever energy is in the room, to cause no fuss, to minimise her unhappiness ("they're not writing nonce on my locker")

She has become the ultimate people pleaser. Such a fascinating character and given relatively few lines to convey her sense of self but I thought the actress did an amazing job.

Thank you for this, you've put it brilliantly. I watched it with my 13 year old DS and lots came up that we discussed but it was hard to talk and watch and also to articulate how I saw it in the moment. I've saved your words to show him - you expose perfectly the perfect storm of seemingly small issues.

Same with both my Dad and step Dad. The scene actually made me feel sick as I was clenching my jaw so much worrying that he was going to smack his wife and daughter.

I thought the whole thing was brilliantly done. I've worked with young people like Jamie and the intimidation I felt as a woman was intolerable. These little boys who think they can make women do whatever they want and don't think twice about using violence to get it.

I’m inclined to agree. I thought the actress herself did an excellent job with the script she was given but I don’t think she was scripted a very good child psychologist! I did wonder, though, if there was some implication that she had herself been the victim of male violence? Hence getting way too upset. She wouldn’t have lasted long in the job if that was how she was supposed to have normally gone on!

I agree with PP that part of this scene was to show the power dynamic between the prison guard and psychologist. But I think we also caught a glimpse on the security camera of Jamie sitting down, stretching/yawning as if he had moved from intense anger back to a relaxed state very quickly. Like nothing had happened. I was wondering at that point if we'd find out he had some sort of psychological issue that would explain a very quick change between incredibly extreme anger/violence and a completely relaxed "normal" state.

Personally, I loved all the episodes. 1 and 3 most, but all were powerful and all added something. The first shows 'the event' magnificently, and the rest look at different aspects of the causes.

Yes, they could have gone through more of the story of the prosecution etc, but would it really have added much except a sense of closure and resolution? And it couldn't realistically have been done in a single take?

I found the whole project really impressive. Art, and good TV is undoubtedly art, doesn't have to make you feel satisfied and comfortable. The fact that we're talking about it now rather than any of the 10000 other shows we could mention is an indicator of how good it was, even when we're discussing what could have been done differently.

Thank you for this. Very insightful.

I'm not sure, but something about him being radicalised very likely..

I loved the show. And unfortunately it reminded me so much of my own teen boy.

I have mixed feelings. While I recognise that the one shot method is amazingly clever, I also think it limited what they could cover. If they wanted to show the effect it was having on the family, they had to make it a whole episode.

Ironically, I feel that there was still too much emphasis on the males. I know this is about a boy committing an awful crime but the female characters were all a bit caricature for me. The Mum and Daughter, as someone has said, placating the dad. The best friend shown as a bit troubled and acting out. And barely a single thing about the victim. There was just no proper representation of how this affects women and girls.

The scene with the psychologist and the guard was a good attempt but too subtle. Women would have recognised his behaviours as off but I'm not sure all men would have. Maybe that's the point but I just felt it missed the mark.

I haven't read or watched much of the writers/Steven Graham so that may explain why they approached it the way they did. It is at least generating discussion about gender perspectives.

Brilliant point

If they'd revealed the report, we would have pathologised it.

He did it because of X condition. He's an anomaly. This couldn't happen to most boys. It wouldn't happen to my boys.

The whole point was that it can, and it is, and that conversation relies on this not being put down to a specific incident in his life or a specific condition; and instead being a more general build of circumstance and family-life and society.

Yes.