Adolescence: The Netflix drama that will have every parent talking - Join our watch thread plus Q&A with producer and cast

[CeriMumsnet]

Premieres 13th March 2025

Read Hannah and Christine's answers to your questions here.

If you’re after a gripping new series to get stuck into, Adolescence is set to be the show of the year - and it’s one that will chill parents to the core. This tense British crime drama begins with the shocking arrest of 13-year-old Jamie Miller for the murder of a classmate. But as the investigation unfolds, the series delves into the unsettling realities of modern masculinity, online radicalisation, and the pressures facing today’s teenagers.

Filmed in South Kirby with a raw, unflinching realism, Adolescence isn’t just another crime drama - it’s a conversation starter. If you were lucky enough to catch the Mumsnet exclusive preview, you’ll know just how haunting and thought-provoking it is, with themes that resonate long after you finish watching.

Watch the trailer here:

Q&A
Adolescence Executive Producer Hannah Walters and actress Christine Tremarco who plays Jamie’s Mum will be joining us for a Q&A in the next couple of weeks, so make sure to share your questions about the show for them below.

• Hannah Walters is an actress, producer and co-founder of Matriarch Productions, an entertainment production company who aims to provide a much-needed platform for underrepresented voices and stories in the UK. Their credits include BOILING POINT (2021) and most recent TV series for the BBC. Hannah has two children with her husband Stephen Graham.

• Christine Tremarco is a British actress who along with playing Jamie’s Mum in Adolescence can also currently be seen in Channel 4’s drama series, The Gathering and in the BBC’s Kidnapped: The Chloe Ayling Story, directed by Al Mackay. Other screen credits include the BBC’s Responder opposite Martin Freeman, a series regular in Sky’s Wolfe, and Shane Meadows’ BAFTA winning series The Virtues opposite Stephen Graham.

So, what do we think? Will you be watching? Does the premise resonate with you? Let’s chat below! 👇

Unfortunately not all killers are from abusive backgrounds or have major trauma. Someone mentioned the Southport killer as an example already and the Prosper case that’s currently in the news. There’s definitely more examples I’m sure but it’s not something I want to actively search google for

@Wallasey123 I think both of those cases were adults. I’m talking specifically about child muderers. I am not aware of any cases of a 13 year old turning to murder where the child wasn’t already very damaged but I might be wrong

Also, to anyone using the shed example to suggest the dad had anger issues, I truly believe that even the calmest, most controlled person can sometimes have an outburst, and it doesn’t always mean something deeper.
My dad is the quietest, sweetest, most patient man, and I can only remember one time in my whole life that he got so angry with my mum that he smashed a box of Christmas baubles. It stuck with me because it was so out of character for him (and I promise he’s never done anything like that before or since). If anything, a big, unexpected reaction like that can have an even bigger impact because it’s so rare and could be why Jamie mentioned it

It’s ofc left unclear so that we wonder but my take is that this was a “normal” dad, maybe angry sometimes - but not enough to warrant major concern

I was gardening today and had a hissy fit with the lawn mower. My DH had hysterics since I’m usually the ultra calm one and he’s the red mist merchant.
DS is fortunately like me and has a very long fuse.
I have been following the comments on Xtwitter and it’s interesting how polarised the views are and very obvious how a lot of men don’t get the underlying theme.
A lot of people are fixated by stereotypes and cannot understand why it is a white teenage boy that has committed a knife crime.
I ended up following a link to a site that lists male sex offenders, I was struck by how many were white European males which sort of disproved the theory of many posters that you have to be Muslim or black to be a violent sexual predator.
I do wonder how many of these men started off as teenage boys who suffered at the hands of bullies and had nowhere to turn for help.
It’s easy to blame the end result without looking at the process. I’m not defending the behaviour but as the mother of a DS20, having navigated the teenage years it can be brutal for boys.
DS is one of the so called 20% who seems to have no problem communicating or interacting with women, but at times he struggles to understand the behaviour and intentions of the young women around him. He is a gentle soul but also caring and protective of all his friends. Hes a rugby player which seems to help them control anger and aggression, which is a little bizarre but respect is an integral part of the game.
I hope that having a mother who was the main earner and who was financially independent has given him the level of respect required to navigate the modern world.

I can think of one particular boy in his year at school who was expelled for bringing a knife into school and threatening a younger boy with it. He bullied DS over the years but DS wouldn’t let it intimidate him. This boy is now a SM influencer, I actually feel sorry for him since he has lost out on a normal late teens/early 20s experience. Meanwhile DS is having the time of his life at uni doing what students do best, learning how to live without your parents.

Sorry but it's impossible unless you sit with them while they do all their homework because it's online and they also need to google stuff. Then the minute they finish their homework remove all their devices immediately. Good luck with that when they can earn their own money and buy their own things. Then not let them on Xbox, phone or a laptop or a Kindle.
Or put on safe controls which they are shown how to circumnavigate everything or they go to their mates house or on the bus home.and going stuff their Then when they miss out on all parties/events/meet ups because they're not on Snapchat or WhatsApp and they blame you for no social life so they rebel and stop listening to you or have such a boring life that they resent you when their older.
I am pretty strict, porn is almost inaccessible on our phones (I can't even buy a bloody vibrator!) but it's not as easy as giving them a brick, putting safe parenting things on or turning off the internet their are ways and means.

Many posters are treating the series as if it was real life and not a work of art.

It’s always hard to know if people were from truly happy homes but I have the example earlier of Brianna Ghey’s killers who seemed to come from happy stable homes but the girl in particular was facinated with violence.

It reminded me a lot of a case in Ireland. Two boys 13 and 14 again apparently from happy homes and obsessed with violence. They killed a young girl Ana Kriégel. Heartbreaking story.

My own personal opinion is that watching and reading lots of violent stuff is as traumatising for children watching violence happen in real life.

A truly brilliant series. I have just binged it and never do that. I ve been a secondary school teacher and was made to feel very uncomfortable by over sexualised and aggressive teenage boys. That was a while ago now but there’s nothing new under the sun; well except for the internet of course.
It is terrifying how much influence there is which is uncontrolled and it permeates all areas. I’m not sure there are are any answers but education; knife control; vigilance and a naive belief that good will win out.
A thought provoking watch that could do a lot of good shown in schools.

I’ve not watched the entire thing yet, but I feel I’ve seen enough from social media to know that this is yet another attempt to make women accountable for
men and boys being violent.

the narrative being painted is that the victim
bullied Jamie. No. She rejected him.

Relationship is the protective factor here.. if boys have that, it goes a long, long way. Keep them close, keep talking.

I feel I’ve seen enough from social media to know that this is yet another attempt to make women accountable for
I've watched all 4 episodes and didn't get this from it at all. It's quite obvious that there is nothing to justify what he did. Thr fact that a boy who's murdered someone thinks that certainly doesn't give it credence in most people's books, surely. Actually watch it and see what you think

So you've not watched something, but read stuff on social media and jumped to a conclusion?

Maybe there's some learning about maybe no believing everything you read on social media and instead watching something and drawing your own views on what you've seen.

I loved this. I’m a teacher in a secondary and I liked how all the micro aggressions in school were shown. The black students isolated and picked on purely because they are different. The less well off kids picked on. The drip drip drip effect of it all. The phones EVERYWHERE!! And the lad was clearly influenced by behaviour he has seen at home. ‘Dad doesn’t hit me so it’s not that bad’. I hear this all the time from kids. Loved even the ‘why did he choose him’ from the mum about him picking his dad. And the mum trying to hyperbole police actions as throwing people the the ground and the sister saying ‘no it wasn’t like that’. Absolutely superb all round.

I agree with other posters that the show explains how difficult it is to comprehend the why of these crimes and pinpoint an exact cause, even though there are contributory factors.

I don’t think the father is portrayed as violent or particularly angry, if anything I think the parts of the show that depict the father’s handling of his anger contrast with how Jamie handles his anger. The father is depicted as caring, even when he is angry. While Jamie is depicted as being completely self centred. I believe this is a function of the adolescence after which the show is named which is characterised by being more self absorbed. I think it would be too easy to blame the dad for Jamie’s behaviour - there was generational trauma due to his own experience of violent abuse as a child but this is not uncommon in families and people are able to change things for the next generation.

I think what the parents were guilty of was a lack of supervision and it was good that they took accountability for this in the final episode, and you could see how instrumental the mother was with this. I thought the mother’s character was a bit more perceptive than the father, hence Jamie saying he chose his dad as his appropriate adult because ‘he wouldn’t judge’, even though what he seemed to fear most was being judged by his father.

I also think the school was a very toxic environment where bullying was rife and even normalised as a way to interact with others. We saw the teachers struggle to maintain discipline. I don’t think that Katie was bullying Jamie and I think it would be a mistake to interpret it as this, I think we need to understand that all the characters were explaining things from their own point of view and experience. The explanation of Katie bullying Jamie came from the detective’s son who himself was being bullied. My reading of the situation was that Katie and Jamie were both being bullied by their peer group. Katie was bullied into sending a topless photo of herself to a boy in the class who then circulated it around the class, and then she was further victimised by the whole class. I presume that her best friend with the difficult home environment was the second girl who Jamie mentioned had had her photos circulated around the class. Jamie also seemed to have been bullied for being different and not fitting in with his male peers, and the show depicts what fitting in meant in that context and how it revolved around sexually exploiting women. I found Jamie’s Instagram extremely disturbing. Even the friend who gave him the knife was obsessed with physical attractiveness as we see from his conversation with the detective and the questions he asked him about school life.

I did not see those toxic manosphere views being challenged anywhere and it kind of reminded me of Donald Trump’s ‘locker room talk’ justification of the recording of him bragging about sexually assaulting women. I do think online radicalisation has a big impact on youth subcultures and what is normalised within them.

I find it interesting what previous posters have said about lack of empathy and I am wondering if perhaps those antisocial personality traits are amplified in the certain people because of the factors that have been highlighted.

If this was a film Owen Cooper would be getting an Oscar.

Can I just point out, and I don't want to spoil this for anyone, although it appears to be filmed with one camera in one long take it probably wasn't.

I don't know for sure, and if it was filmed like that, then I have even more respect for the actors.

I thought them strip searching Jamie was a bit 'off', in prisons they strip search half of your body and then you get that half dressed before they search the other half so I would have thought it would be the same with the police. I also think the dad would probably be complaining about that.

Still processing it all. But just in terms of the quality of acting, Owen Cooper absolutely nailed it in the third episode from my own experience of working with young offenders. I also thought Fatima Bojang (Jade) was superb.

I’m not going to be watching it.

it’s a glorification of male violence against women, framing women to be to blame.

@ForTealBee it really doesn’t glorify it or put the blame on women.

Totally up to you whether you watch it or not but your second paragraph is totally in accurate. It does neither of those things.

Someone mentioned the Bulger case before. IIRC the ringleader had a horrible homelife but the accomplice didn't.

Someone relatively normal can be led astray by another person. But it does seem a stretch that that boy, with no history of violence in a stable home, would stab a girl to death. Not that it couldn't happen and it's dramatised to make a point regarding online safety.

In the 90s/2000s the moral panic was violence in video games or certain music (I remember Marilyn Manson and a video game being blamed for influencing the Columbine killers in 1999).

Now they've got the online influence and other things like drill music. If we're honest violent knife crime is more of an epidemic in the UK among other ethnicities.

I have watched it all. DH and I binged over two nights. I thought the 3rd episode was amazing with Jamie and the psychiatrist - the acting was phenomenal - both deserve awards for that.
I knew about Incels/Andrew Tate/misogyny but my DH was very unaware of it all and neither of us knew anything about 80/20, incel emojis etc. We did a bit of a deep dive afterwards to what it all means for teens today.
Looking at the programme, I think that Jamie's family were outwardly portrayed as 'typical', but irl I don't know anyone who lets their 13 year old child be online until 1am on a school night (or any night knowingly - the parents said they saw the light on in his room), or be out wandering the streets at nearly bedtime, Maybe I'm just naive. Also, the dad definitely had some anger issues, which isn't uncommon, but I felt the family (although after the event) were waking on eggshells around him.
This was all tied up with bullying, incel culture, lack of self worth, etc. I think they obviously chose a quite cute looking young lad to portray a very damaged teen, rather than someone who we would immediately think looked like a wrong 'un.
Should definitely be in schools, I have urged my 20 year old son to watch it as well.
I also think Katy was bullying Jamie online with her use of the emojis on insta but obviously, that was no excuse for Jamie to kill her. He couldn' t handle that or the rejection of him by her due to having been radicalised.
Unfortunately due to his lack of self-worth due to some toxic behaviour at school /isolation from lockdowns he got caught up in something a couple of years ago (last year of secondary and beyond), could be seen to link to incel type behaviour from one of his now-very ex friends. We did spot something was wrong, but he didn't tell us for ages and we were absolutely shattered when it came out. Can't be too specific on here,I had my suspcions about this 'friend' of his who even came to our house a few times, but until he told us we had no idea of what was really going on. Unfortunaty what did happen wasn't against the law in England, but it would have beena criminal offence in Scotland. So what I am saying is, people need to keep a v close eye on behavioural changes, patterns of socialising etc. - then you may be able to spot if there is something not quite right.

I thought the 3rd episode was amazing with Jamie and the psychiatrist - the acting was phenomenal - both deserve awards for that.

Can you elaborate on this? I thought this episode was unbelievably bad. The psychologist (not psychiatrist) was deeply unprofessional and the dialogues were extraordinarily tedious and slow. It felt like remedial teaching.

I also thought it was brilliant. It was just very watchable (for me) and I thought the acting was great as I believed the characters in the moment and genuinely wondered about their motivations and reactions to each other.. as opposed to when I am watching something and am very aware of the actors “acting” if you see what I mean?

It reminded me of watching theatre rather than film, which I really prefer - although we all have different opinions on that of course.

Also, it’s my experience of life that “professionals” often are very unprofessional, in many different roles. I thought that was deliberate and added to human but flawed perspective that was shown throughout.

Each episode is absolutely filmed in one single take. What makes you think it isn't?

Fair enough, the psychologist was as hopeless at her job as everyone else in the show. There were no redeeming characters - they weren't "flawed" so much as the dregs of society.