Not since the height of Harry Potter mania has a fictional teenage boy so captured Britain’s attention. Adolescence, a compelling drama about a 13-year-old ‘incel’ who fatally stabs a female classmate, has dominated the national conversation for over a week now.
The show has received rave reviews from the mainstream press. UK prime minister Keir Starmer wants it to be screened in secondary schools. For those championing it, it is seen as delivering an important message about toxic masculinity and the malign role played by social-media influencers like Andrew Tate.
In response to the embrace of Adolescence by our cultural and political elites, there has since been a bit of a backlash, especially among the online right. Countless viral tweets have complained that the teenage killer, Jamie, is a white boy. They point out that the horrific murder in Croydon of Elianne Andam in September 2023, which apparently inspired star and co-creator Stephen Graham, was carried out by a young black boy. Others have argued that the bigger threat to teenage girls comes from Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs, rather than white working-class boys, as if that’s at all relevant to a show which doesn’t touch on that issue whatsoever.
These critics are also noting some of the real-life inspirations for Adolescence and not others. Indeed, it is not totally unheard of for a white incel to turn murderous. In 2021, 22-year-old Jake Davison, a regular on incel forums, killed his mother and four strangers, including a young girl, in a shooting spree in Plymouth.
In any case, just like Starmer and Co, what most right-wing critics seem to have forgotten is that Adolescence is not a documentary, it is a work of art. As such, it does not have to stick to the facts of particular real-life cases. It merely has to be true to the laws of its own fictional world.
If assorted right-wingers are really concerned about the fidelity of Adolescence to real life, a bigger question they ought to ask is why Jamie was portrayed as having two flawed but fundamentally normal and loving married parents. Statistically, children are far more likely to be drawn into crime and dysfunction if their backgrounds are characterised by family breakdown. Adolescence sends out the message that anyone’s child could turn into a murderous misogynist, as if all it takes is access to a computer and Andrew Tate’s X profile. Yet the boys attracted to the likes of Tate are already predisposed to have poor attitudes towards relationships and women, which is usually a reflection of their chaotic home lives.
Still, whatever Adolescence’s shortcomings, it’s time everyone calmed down about it and started judging it for what it is – a work of art.
Georgia L Gilholy is a freelance journalist living in London.
