Netflix’s Adolescence: Insightful or Irrelevant?

Netflix’s four episode limited series Adolescence aired on 13th March 2025 and was immediately met with mainstream success and critical acclaim. From the day of its release several articles were written singing its praises, calling it “the greatest show of all time”.

The show has also been well loved by audiences- currently sitting at a 99% on Rotten Tomatoes and 8.2 on IMDb. The show has clearly cemented its place in the court of public opinion.

The show has been praised repeatedly for its depiction of how young boys can easily be radicalised to the point of committing violent acts against women. In the show, a 13 year old boy, Jamie (played by Owen Cooper) stabs one of his fellow classmates Katie with a knife. The first two episodes follow the lead detective on the case, Detective Bascombe as he arrests Jamie and searches for means and motive for his crime.

A moment from the show, when Jamie is interacting with the psychologist assigned to his case

The later half of the show is the part that truly sticks out. Episode three follows Jamie talking to a psychologist assigned to his case and is hauntingly poignant and uncomfortable to witness as a viewer. This episode is by far the most notable and widely acclaimed of the bunch. The final episode serves as a sort of epilogue following Jamie’s family as they grapple with the aftermath of what he’s done.

The show is undeniably well made in terms of technical filmmaking, each episode being shot in one singular take, it is without a doubt a technical marvel. The story however, is where the quality of the show has been more largely debated.

Now in all fairness a lot of the criticism is decidedly in bad faith. The show sheds light on the harm that society is doing to our young men and the people selling those men online courses on how to “Man Up” are obviously upset. The show does at its core achieve what it wants to - that anyone, any boy from any family can fall victim to these toxic ideologies - even a 13 year old like Jamie who comes from a normal family and likes History and Art and never leaves his room.

However for all that Adolescence does do right- I have felt ever since I watched it that it was lacking something.

I have seen many people claim that the show should be made required viewing in schools or shown to young boys everywhere - this is pointless. The show, while good for introducing these concepts to parents, doesn’t really do anything for the youth. Any child old enough to see it is already familiar with this pipeline and either already opposes it or has already fallen victim to “red-pill” ideology.

There lies another problem. While Adolescence is informative, it is not transformative. The show does not at any point make an effort to change the ideology these young boys have. The show never disapproves these toxic beliefs, it only showcases them, and of course this is fair for a show to do. It is not obligated to teach a moral lesson when it never intended to, however, it is worth discussing this absence.

In the second episode DI Bascombe’s son confidently tells him the ridiculous 80 to 20 rule spewed by the manosphere (that 80% of woman are attracted to only 20% of men) citing it as the cause for Jamie’s actions. His ideology is never questioned, not even when Jamie repeats it again in the next episode. This makes it easier for the young boys watching to maintain that belief. The show, while not intending it to be so, makes it very easy for boys to conclude that while the ideology holds true, Jamie just took it too far.

A still from Adolescence, showing Detective Bascombe with his son

Another contribution for this conclusion is the show's sidelining of female characters. Adolescence is laser-focused on the topic of male anger. This is fair, but I feel the show's underutilization of the female cast makes the story less impactful than it could be. In the show, the female detective laments that at the end of the day, in cases like this, the spotlight is on the man who committed the crime, not the woman whose life was lost forever. It's a nice moment, but it rings hollow because it is true.

The show will never tell you anything about Katie. Even her best friend Jade refused to talk to the police - thus the only information we ever hear about this poor girl is what comes out of Jamie’s mouth. In a twisted sense, the show seemingly takes the suffering of men more seriously than the suffering of men. There is no real sympathy for the 13 year old who got nude pictures of herself leaked, instead, all the characters seem invested in claiming that she bullied Jamie (by calling him an incel, which is barely an insult these days, as far as I know). It would be fair to argue that this is on purpose, to add to the uncomfortable feeling that the show wishes to foster in its audience. However, the other women in the show do not fare much better.

Jamie's mother and sister

The most egregious examples in my opinion come in the last episode, Jamie’s mother and sister play incredibly passive roles in the story. While the father gets to be angry at the kids harassing them and angry at himself for letting it happen - the only thing the women get to feel is sadness. 

Jamie’s sister can no longer enter his room, not because she’s mad at what he did or by the bullying she’s facing at college, not because she’s disgusted that her own brother could do something so vile, no she is simply sad, sad that Jamie is going to jail and that her Dad is upset.

This feels so useless to me - Jamie’s sister could’ve been such an interesting angle to look at the story from. She's a young women in college who has certainly faced harassment from incels, she too grew up around their father’s anger issues. So why does she do nothing but placate her dad, why does she joke around with Jamie when he just announced he would be pleading guilty for killing a 13 year old girl? As an older sister with a little brother this frustrates me all the more. If my own brother had done this, I would be so devastated and so utterly disturbed and disgusted. But Adolescence had no interest in that story. In its quest to expose the manosphere, it makes the exact same mistake. It forgets that women too are people.

Would I recommend the show Adolescence? Probably, it’s a good show, it’s worth watching at the very least from a filmmaking perspective, but I do maintain that it is much too overhyped for what it actually is.

Written By Tista Sengupta