In just four days Adolescence has done more to highlight the endemic of misogyny seeping out of teenage boys than anything else has achieved in years.
The four-part drama stars Owen Cooper in his first-ever role as Jamie, who has been accused of murdering a teenage girl, Katie.
It begins with the moment he was arrested and each episode intensely follows the subsequent moments through four one-shot episodes told in real-time.
Also starring Stephen Graham, Erin Doherty and Ashley Walters, Adolescence is an alarming insight into incel culture and the rise in popularity of the so-called ‘manosphere’.
Misogyny isn’t a new concept, but it’s evolved – particularly among young men like Jamie.
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‘There been a shift in the behaviour of young boys since the explosion of Andrew Tate and the manosphere,’ *Emma, a high school English teacher tells Metro.co.uk.
‘In the past two to three years there’s been quite an explosion with how famous Andrew Tate got, the media attention and pressure he was getting, I think that’s when it started to reach more and more young men.
‘There’s always been a base level of immature misogyny in schools like “girls are gross and scary creatures who I don’t understand.” But in terms of how women and girls are treated, one of the changes that we’ve noticed in school settings is girls talking about acts of sexual harassment or sexual assault at school – they’re more likely to tell you how misogynistic the boys are.’
The focus of Adolescence is less on who killed Katie, but on why.
Jamie seems like your average teenager. He doesn’t scream killer, but Emma warns she can easily spot boys like Jamie.
‘They are quiet, they are distrustful of women, they’re angry,’ she says.
‘They’re incredibly hard to reach, incredibly hard to create connections with, and especially in teaching English a lot of our work is discussion-based, so that’s normally how you form connections with students by giving them a space to have their opinions.
‘But quite often those kinds of boys keep their opinions themselves or share quite extreme opinions about society and about women so they get shut down by their classmates which makes them not want to share again because they get labelled as weird.’
In Adolescence, Jamie’s parents Eddie (Stephen Graham) and Manda Miller (Christine Tremarco) are determined to prove his innocence. Their boy seems harmless, scared and so far from a violent teenager capable of stabbing a girl seven times.
But boys like Jamie are terrifyingly common. Perhaps not every classroom has a potential killer, but the incel community is much more widespread than parents or even adults are aware.
And while Emma can spot the signs in their behaviour, there is no typical incel. The manosphere doesn’t discriminate as long as you are male.
While Adolescence is undeniably brilliant, powerful, and perhaps the most important piece of television in decades, it only scratches the surface.
‘I think it misses the scale of misogynistic abuse and violence that happens in our schools every day,’ says Emma.
‘Young women are reporting it and not enough is being done to prevent girls at school being harassed and abused by their classmates.
‘Also it misses the scale of violence in our society, not even just against women, but young men committing acts of violence because of their these belief systems and because they are feeling so angry at the world.’
Gareth Southgate railed against ‘callous toxic influencers’ taking the place of father figures in his rousing Richard Dimbleby Lecture this week while Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said he’s been watching Adolescence with his two children, 14 and 16, and acknowledged: ‘This violence carried out by young men, influenced by what they see online, is a real problem.
‘It’s abhorrent, and we have to tackle it.’
Emma says we need more masculine voices addressing the ‘manosphere’ in the public sphere because ‘that’s the only way that things are going to change’.
But ultimately, this is a problem that needs to be solved by all – it’s not just the responsibility of parents.
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‘As a society, we need to address our online safety laws,’ Emma urges.
‘We need to address in the home, in you know, we need to get teenagers out of their bedrooms and off their phones. And how you do that is where the difficulty lies, but there needs to be a cultural shift.’
*Names have been changed for this article.
Adolescence is available to stream on Netflix now.
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