Hit TV series Adolescence is now a national talking point. But can a piece of television really impact society?
Last year it was Mr Bates Vs The Post Office. This year it appears to be Adolescence. A show that delivers something increasingly difficult to achieve in the 21st century: ‘water cooler’ television. The kind you can talk about with a colleague at work who, if you brought up, say, Severance, might respond with a blank look.
You might argue that Baby Reindeer also struck a similar popular culture chord last year, but therein, perhaps, lies the difference. Mr Bates and Adolescence are not about tapping into a true crime revelation or a specific, disturbing cultural more, but rather serve as public service television. They’ve been designed to make the British public aware of a deep-rooted societal injustice or problem.
Mr Bates, while no less powerful in what it revealed, was a much sleepier, pastoral series than Adolescence. Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne’s four-part Netflix series is a troubling look at the toxic manosphere spreading through western culture. It is, if not completely radicalising teenage boys, then having such a disturbing effect on their psyche and self-esteem that it opens the door to nightmarish possibilities for society. Mr Bates was an expose. Adolescence is a warning.
None of what it shines a light on is new. Activists such as Laura Bates have been writing books on the emerging manosphere for years now (if you read only one book on this, make it her Men Who Hate Women). Andrew Tate is a well ingrained bogeyman for schools and youth groups across the UK, having long sold a brand of self-aggrandising misogyny. At its core, it’s little more than a grift not just by Tate, but also Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk and even the President the United States.
Yet until Adolescence, little of this growing subculture has been adequately depicted through drama in a way designed to capture the cultural consciousness. Toxic masculinity is a frequent reference point in modern fictional narratives, particularly since the #MeToo movement in the wake of Harvey Weinstein. It’s been especially prevalent in the horror genre (take recent films such as Companion, for example), but it often feels abstractly approached as opposed to the devastating reality employed by Adolescence.
Over the past week, several male figures who typify the precise opposite of Tate, Musk or Peterson’s ilk have spoken out about the serious problem the drama highlights. Sir Gareth Southgate, the ex-England football manager, spoke of how young boys and men are being polluted by negative influences. Moreover the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, mentioned watching it in the House of Commons, though he seemed to think it might be a documentary.
Read more: Adolescence episode 1 review | A horrific crime kicks off Philip Barantini’s new drama
Tate aside, Adolescence doesn’t mention any of its poisonous influences by name, but Starmer and Southgate tethering messages about the lack of progressive, caring but strong male role models in society in the wake of this TV show seems considerably pointed.
The fact that Adolescence is able to carry such weight further points to the influence television can still hold over public discourse. The sad fact is that it isn’t being made on the BBC, or rather ITV – indeed the producer of Mr Bates recently suggested given the parlous state of TV production funding in the UK, he doubted even that show would have been made only a year later, and consider the public good that did. Netflix has stepped up to the plate to produce this, seemingly with Graham’s original concept intact, but it says something about how television has changed.
Arguably, enough people in the UK now use Netflix for Adolescence to take hold and be considered the most watched drama on TV over the last week or two. It has broken through enough for even those who haven’t seen it to be aware it exists, which few series on streaming services, certainly outside of recognised intellectual property, can do. Netflix will be happy to have such a hit on its hands, but there is a sadness about how it’s been left to a multinational conglomerate backing a series with such an important public interest aspect. Not so long ago, something like Adolescence would have been backed by the BBC, ITV or Channel 4.
The question is whether Adolescence will trigger any kind of significant government or public action. Its messages are clear. Social media without regulation for children of school age is incredibly damaging. Parents are woefully uninformed and at best, unintentionally negligent about the dangers of social media platforms and the impact it’s having on their children’s mental health and wellbeing. Finally, young men need rescuing from the shallow, misogynistic grifters peddling false narratives about female equality, conspiracy theories that feed incel beliefs, and how money is the root of all success. Boys need better men, with better intentions at heart, to guide them.
If Adolescence does anything, it might at least move parents to reconsider their children’s access to social media, even if they fear the impact for them socially. Any parent who watches the final episode, in which Graham’s father has to grapple over whether he let his son down, will surely fear their own family facing such a scenario. It’s the kind of nightmare they would never truly recover from.
That a TV show can still impact us in such a way shows just how, even in the streaming age, there is no medium quite like it.
You can find A J. on social media, including links to his podcasts and books, via Linktr.ee here.
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