Adolescence

[heartsinvisiblefury]

What an amazing piece of television. Stephen Graham is exceptional. Highly recommend this - on Netflix.

A really good summary. You actually wonder how much of all that is deliberate vs how much is just what Graham and Thorne wrote without thinking.

And I wonder how many people watching made excuses - 'he's under so much pressure', 'he's trying to keep it together for his family' and 'I feel so sorry for him'.

But we gloss over the Mum who is in fact emotionally stronger and IS keeping it together for the family without the hysteria and inability to control her own emotions.

I wondered if Jade had been sexually harassed or assaulted; it seemed to be suggested that she had been involved with the police before and there was the suggestion she’d had therapy before? Her attitude to the police rings true if she had been somehow let down before.

I loved it. The psychologist stuff is very true to life, I work in forensic mental health - with a view to working in forensic camhs one day - and have often had to steady myself in corridors after being verbally abused or threatened.

I saw an interview with Stephen Graham and he said it was due to 2 RL stories of teenage boys killing teenage girls in different parts of England. I think they intended to look an online influences on our children rather than a story about gang culture.

Episode 1 was good, 2 was tedious, 3 was ok and 4 felt very long. I like Stephen Graham but this didn’t really live up to the hype.

Thank you ☺️
Yes, I’m fascinated to know whether this was purposeful or not.
The women is all instances in the program are a prop.
The women in the murderers family are passive, ignored or only praised for cooking; the young man commenting his mum can only make a good roast. Mums low self esteem, is this caused by her not advocating by herself?
The daughter is cast to the side, she is left alone while the mother comforts the father.

Even the female detective is subjected to her colleagues burps, sent to the police station to continue working while the male detective gets chips with his son, referred to as ‘love’ by the father of the family.

The female teachers in the school are breathless and ineffective and soft, where as the male teachers are angry, stressed and haggard.

Really enjoying everyone’s takes on this.

The school episode let it down really as everything that happened and the way it was conducted was so unrealistic.

Yes, the dad was a problem. It was quite subtle, but not, as the episode went on, if that makes sense.

The realisation when Jamie said he was better than the other boys because he could have touched any part of Katie that he wanted, but didn’t, as if he had that right, and the subsequent change in attitude by the psychologist was well done.

I’m still amazed by how they achieved the filming and single takes.

I wondered this. Is it unrealistic? Or is it so far removed from the school days we remember we're just out of touch? I don't know the answer to that. It's something I was asking myself.

I hear about teachers leaving the profession in droves due to student behaviour, so there has to be some truth to it - even if exaggerated for dramatic effect.

One thing that stood out to me with the school was the apathy. The fact that adults couldn't really do anything. The kids didn't trust them, the adults though kept continually never let a child finish a sentence, the kids didn't feel heard. DH actually shouted at the TV - let him finish his bloody sentence - when the lad was trying to tell his Dad about what the insta posts really meant.

Also the general anxiety in the school - one the girls leaving a classroom when the fire alarm went off 'is it terrorists?'.

The kids didn't feel safe. I personally thought the school episode was fascinating.

I thought it was a load of crap. Long, boring and didn’t keep my attention at all. DH gave up half way through episode 2.

I said the same. I have 4 kids, the younger two now 17 and 18 thought it was OTT and they’d never come across that sort of thing at 13 years old. We all wondered what he was doing out so late - he was still 13 in episode 2 so nearer to 12 when the incident happened. Why weren’t the parents checking social media and monitoring phone use. Our actual router was always set with strong parental controls and so were the kids phones when they were that age.

Yes so far I do think it's a load of overthought, overacted and self indulgent twaddle. Misogyny, it's incels fault, whatever.

Evil people do evil things but let's blame it on the internet influencers. Disclaimer I am only on ep 2 so not sure if that is the conclusion just going by what people have said.

Mary Bell murdered 2 dc years before the internet, I wonder what had 'radicalised' her.

The solicitor was good. Nice to see the baddie from Happy Valley actually acting and playing a different character, take note Mr Graham.

No I watched all four, why would I say I binged it if I didn't watch it all 😂 Episode one the initial arrest, two the school, three the psychologist, four the family.

Started watching it last night, ended up staying up to watch all 4 episodes.

I work in a junior school and can certainly see even at age 9+ how some boys could go on to be like Jamie. Kids regularly tell each other to f* off and as a member of staff I've been on the receiving end of such language as well as witnessing it between boys. I've seen overtly sexualised language used too against girls. I've seen boys form gangs in order to bully and harass. When this has been addressed with parents, some have been dismissive of it as 'boys being boys', 'bants' or even 'what do you expect me to do about it?'. Other parents have taken it seriously but the pattern repeats.

There is little to no MH support outside of school when it is needed; waiting lists are long and the child still in school being unsafe. Schools do the best they can to support and address, but there's only so much we can do. Schools are increasingly being relied upon to fix things, but whilst we get CPD, we're not specialists. There's a huge difference between resolving friendship fallouts to dealing with violent, abusive children (some from neglectful backgrounds but not bad enough for SS to get involved).

Ep 3 - I could fully relate to the psych sitting with Jamie. I've had similar reactions from boys who threaten, throw chairs, tip desks, intimidate and goad adults etc. It does leave you having to take time out to calm yourself after a child has behaved like that, before you then get yourself back in class to do your job.

And in the meantime, other children are witnessing this, then talking about it on snapchat and WhatsApp when they get home. This can ramp things up so the next day, we're unravelling what has been said and dealing with the fallout.

I mentioned earlier I had an issue with the characterisation for Jamie and it has been touched on a bit more by others here.

I feel that two things lead to the outcome in this protrayal and Jamie didn’t meet either, a personality disorder or trauma, having grown up with a severely personality disordered brother - Jamie didn’t fit that character.

The second one is trauma, trauma is an internal experience based on varying external factors, I would argue that it is very unlikely based on the characteristics of Jamie’s family circumstances, his school life or his on line life, as portrayed that he would meet the threshold for stabbing someone which is actually an enormous deal as a human being.

I think there would need to be at least one of the following: a much higher level of disconnection with his parents, much more severe insidious bullying, a much more distorted personality caused by psychopathy or something of that nature.

That sounds like an absolute nightmare. Not surprising so many teachers are leaving the profession. My kids secondary isn't that bad but the one in the next town is terrible. My dd has shown me Snapchats that are shared of the school being vandalised, the behaviour in class and the way people swear at teachers, kids being beaten up and it shared round. It's quite horrifying.

I've watched the behind the scenes clips on Netflix, and Graham says that he specifically didn't want the household to be dysfunctional - he used the example of not wanting the mum to be an alcoholic or the dad being a violent abuser. The whole point was to make viewers think, shit, this could happen to me, or anyone I know. Graham's character even says at the end that when they bought Jamie the computer, it was better than being out up to no good, what harm could be possibly do shut away in his room? So simply being a little lax, naive, ignorant of what kids can be and are exposed to online, can lead to really extreme consequences.

Having seen the BTS I think the subtle hints of toxic masculinity in the household, the attitudes of both Graham's character and Jamie towards women combined with the placid, passive nature of both the mum and the daughter were (mostly) deliberate, and are supposed to leave viewers with the feeling of the whole family contributed to the death of Katie, but it happened so easily that you're meant to feel unsettled and take notice that it really could happen to any family with the right combination of factors.

'I've watched the behind the scenes clips on Netflix, and Graham says that he specifically didn't want the household to be dysfunctional - he used the example of not wanting the mum to be an alcoholic or the dad being a violent abuser. The whole point was to make viewers think, shit, this could happen to me'

But what's the point of making scenarios up, the stats prove him wrong. Violent offenders usually do have form for violence, dysfunctional backgrounds and absent or abusive parents.

That is the thing though, it does take this level of dysfunction to cause these issues, they are not just a roulette wheel. Sure other kids can be in tail wind of other kids engaging in the dysfunction but there is little to no evidence that kids without PDs or trauma are committing murder everywhere and anywhere. There is tonnes of research that trauma and PDs are linked to these behaviours.

Ultimately Adolescence is fiction, but I think the message is important. The Miller family did not think they were dysfunctional, and in fact I think a lot of people watching will recognise certain behaviours within that family but they won't register them as dysfunctional. I don't think it's particularly helpful to dismiss the underlying themes as not applicable to you, it would never happen to you, because it strikes me that the Miller family would have done exactly the same, and that's the point. Jamie was bright, polite, came across as a sweet boy when he wanted to. Stephen Graham's character was outwardly OTT lovely, calling everyone love, polite etc. Then it's revealed at the end that both of them have short, explosive tempers and it's just been accepted by the women in the family as 'normal'. I'll even go as far to say that all, or almost all, families operate under some level of dysfunction, even if they don't realise it.

They were dysfunctional that was covered well enough in the programme but every family is dysfunctional because humans are imperfect. There is this talk in “therapy circles” about parents being good enough so not perfect or even far off perfect but still good enough so the question for this scenario is were the parents externally dysfunctional enough to cause these issues level of disconnection to cause their son to believe that murder was a reasonable course of action. I don’t for a second believe they were. It was like in the 80s when I was growing up when we were all taught that anyone could become a drug addict, it is Russian roulette, except that is not what happened, those in grinding poverty, with deep trauma and deeply dysfunction disconnected family situations represent the vast amount of addiction. This is no different.

The police at interview asked him about his behaviour issues at school - this wasn't delved into further as they presented further evidence where it was obvious that his behaviour at school paled into insignificance against the evidence they were questioning over.
Equally Jamie was obviously out and about late evening, but mum and dad said he was in his room gaming when they went to bed, so they thought he was safe. They either were ignorant of their son leaving the house to roam in the late evening or they knew but didn't think anything of it as he was with friends.

This is one of if not the best thing I’ve ever seen

I agree that it seemed a bit unbelievable to me that he'd go from being an Internet dwelling introvert, on his computer every waking hour, straight to a late night stalker who stabs someone 7 times then goes home to bed having expertly hidden all the physical evidence including weapon, whilst also being innocent and young enough to pee his pants when the police arrive shortly after. It seems very confused in that way. Also, it just irked me slightly that it turned into an immediate diagnosis of the victim "bullying" the perpetrator rather than evidence suggesting their relationship was more complex than first thought and needing more investigation. I'm not saying she didn't bully him, but the police detective just seemed to accept that straight off to the extent he announced it in a school corridor in front of the ditsy head of lower school who could then immediately tell the motive to everyone she knew. Things seemed too simply portrayed in terms of plot but I think that might have been a consequence of the way it was shot. They couldn't cut to the police station later showing further investigative work - they had to establish the motive there and then in the school but he didn't have to announce it!

I enjoyed the acting though. Episode 3 was the best one in my view. Thought episodes 1 and 4 dragged on a bit. My main problem is the whole premise seems to be that this could happen to anyone but I agree with pp, that really I don't think it does just happen to anyone if all people are mentally well and the home life is within fairly normal parameters.

Thank goodness it’s not just me! I sped up the last episode I got so bored.
And I love SG, just thought this was depressing and dull. And I don’t like that kind of camera work.

I was really looking forward to watching after reading all the reviews. What a disappointment!. I thought it was boring and so predictable. The acting was really bad. Couldn't make it to the end so I just googled spoilers. 2/10