Adolescence episode 4 picks up with Jamie’s family a year after the shocking murder, but it’s hard to move on. Here’s our review.
How do you get over your son being accused of a particularly cruel murder? 13 months after Jamie Miller was arrested on suspicion of the murder of a girl in his class, the Millers are trying to get on with their lives. It’s Eddie’s (Stephen Graham) birthday and his wife Manda (Christine Tremarco) is preparing him a proper birthday fry up, black pudding and all.
For a minute there, you might think nothing was wrong, that Jamie’s crime was just a distant memory. Hey, maybe they even cleared him of the charges – maybe it was just a misunderstanding. Reality hits soon enough, as Eddie’s van is found vandalised outside on the driveway. The word “Nonse” is painted on the side of the van, and soon two kids cycle past yelling the same thing, clearly not even knowing what it means or how to spell it.
We follow the Millers as they head over to Wainwright’s to buy some paint to cover up the shameful word. Things go from bad to worse as one of the employees expresses his support for Jamie, much to Eddie’s dismay. The family is trying to put all of this behind them and carry on, but there’s no escaping Jamie’s crime, it seems.
Adolescence, throughout its four episodes, has been technically impressive with its one-shot approach to such a complex, current narrative. But what really elevates that technical side of things is the quality of its acting. Adolescence wouldn’t work nearly as well without its performances, especially those of Graham and Tremarco in this final episode. They’re both unprecedentedly, disarmingly vulnerable here, and tackle some tough material.
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If episode 3 was close to a horror film, episode 4 plays out like a tragedy. Its final moments hold an immense emotional power as Eddie and Manda ponder their part in Jamie’s upbringing.
“We made him, didn’t we?” they ask themselves. Did they, though? Are parents to blame wholly how their kids turn out, especially as social media takes up more and more of our time and kids are exposed to things most of us never were at their age?
“Involuntary celibate” wasn’t a thing in the 90s when I was growing up, but the internet is a much scarier place than it was then. At worst, my friends ignored me at the Habbo Hotel, but never was I encouraged to harm anyone or nudged to believe I was somehow superior to others.
Adolescence is the best thing I’ve watched in 2025, be it TV or film. I can’t find anything bad to say about it, nothing to fault. It’s not a series I’ll immediately revisit – it left me completely speechless and shaken – but it’s likely to stay with me for a long time. Adolescence feels important, too, confronting such a difficult subject with clarity and calm. If Boiling Point was co-creator Paul Barantini indulging in chaos, Adolescence is the director’s attempt to make sense of something unbearable. The result is some of the most remarkable British TV ever made.
