Adolescence Review: A Heart-Wrenching Melodrama That Pulls No Punches (2025)

The following contains spoilers for Adolescence, now streaming on Netflix.

Adolescence offers audiences no escape routes. This unflinching original from Netflix is a reality check some will find hard to face and harder to forget. It explores the cultural impact of social media with uncompromising honesty, daring to tackle taboo subjects head-on. Creators Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham have caused nothing short of a seismic shift in small-screen drama with this show and achieved it all in four episodes. With newcomer Owen Cooper, they have also discovered a potential movie star in the making, who provides this series with one of many emotional centers.

Early in the morning, an invasive camera follows first responders as they arrest a teenager. In that first technical flourish, director Philip Barantini employs the same single-shot technique he used on Boiling Point. A collaboration with Stephen Graham that revolved around catering and added an immediacy to that cutting-edge melodrama. With Adolescence, that approach feels even more intrusive, given the offense for which Jamie Miller is being arrested. Powerless to prevent the police from taking his son away for questioning, Eddie must come to terms with some horrible home truths — secrets that parents should never find out about their children, no matter old they are.

Adolescence Explores the Dangers of Growing Up Online

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Society is changing, and Adolescence faces that directly. Teenagers now exist in a virtual world defined by rules only they can decipher. Popularity is a full-time profession that starts at home on multi-player gaming platforms and across countless chatrooms worldwide. Emojis are now an emotional currency that come with their own online language, which can make or break a teenager in seconds. This is the foundation that Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham use to explore suspected murder. A tangled web of social cues and veiled messaging across media platforms for which parents have no defense. Fooled into thinking online friendships are a natural progression, rather than anything more sinister, older generations have been caught off guard.

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Self-awareness has reached a fever pitch, and the internet has made information instantly available. With that knowledge has come the power to cast judgment without a jury, painting perpetrators and their parents with the same brush. Bullying is more sophisticated, popularity has moved beyond peer groups, and good looks are no longer enough. The rise of anxiety-based illnesses has risen in line with online information, while self-diagnosis has indulged those who seek acceptance. With smartphones available to every teenager and teachers being asked to educate a generation who claim to know everything, something has to give. This entitled attitude comes from a constant need for validation coupled with infinite choice, where economic uncertainty and poor job prospects offer few alternatives.

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Adolescence highlights a generational disconnect between parents and their children that runs deeper than age difference. It shines a light on subtleties that have evolved in line with technology, moving beyond messaging and morphing into something much more damaging. The need to compete is no longer about sporting achievements but encompasses every element of social interaction. Jamie Miller embodies all of those anxieties and inhabits the grey area where words like victim have multiple meanings. Not only does the Netflix original dig deeper into this generational disconnect than any show has ever dared, but it never tries to sugarcoat anything. Leaving audiences in no doubt, whatever the outcome of Jamie’s arrest, Adolescence has already changed the game for good.

Owen Cooper Gives a Powerhouse Performance

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Guilt is also something that Adolescence skirts around across four episodes as the evidence against Jamie gets unpacked. There is no denying the severity of the crime, but debates around his guilt will rage on for a long time. Motivation is a big factor in anything people do, but when that driving force comes from outside influences, who is ultimately to blame? Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham are careful to lay out all the facts and dramatically document every angle, yet somehow, they still leave room for doubt. Given the pressures of social conformity, overbearing peer groups, and that need for acceptance, could validation be considered a motive? That ambiguity is what sustains Adolescence during those crucial early scenes between Jamie and his father, Eddie. In the beginning, there is a trust born of blood that has no awareness of those social media influences. By the end, this series addresses everyone who watches in silence, contemplating the conversations that may come later on.

That disconnect is most prevalent between generations when the police look for Jamie’s motive through conventional means. With all the evidence captured on CCTV and across social media, everything is there apart from motivation. As a social commentary mic drop moment, Adolescence never hits it out of the park. The intention is not to grandstand and celebrate the intelligence of these writers, but to educate audiences without ego. Key moments between Detective Inspector Bascombe and his son Adam speak to that cultural disconnect that defines this show. Elsewhere, Owen Cooper holds his own opposite Stephen Graham and Erin Doherty, raging against a society that some might say caused him to commit this crime — adding shade to a fearless performance that shows formidable range in one so young.

Eddie Miller: Maybe I took my eye off the ball a little bit. We thought he was safe in his room; what harm could he do in there?

That is the final element of Adolescence that makes it so uncomfortable. Nobody here drops the ball dramatically for a second, conveying emotional honesty across four flawless episodes. With the technical demands of a show that moves between scenes like an intrusive audience member, this aims to make everyone complicit. It is a front-row seat to the Miller family experience, headlined by Stephen Graham in unstoppable form — yet another example of a collaboration with director Philip Barantini that cuts to the heart of human nature. In Adolescence, the rules of theater apply more than television, since it feels more like a live performance. Cameras crossover at vital moments, transitioning through windows and escalating emotions. Characters are left in conversation, and scenes flow together in a seamless web of subplots as people come and go. Everything feels organic and improvised as violence erupts from nowhere or characters lash out in frustration. Even in the aftermath of arrest and incarceration, Adolescence makes those hard choices.

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Scenes between Jamie and Briony, played by Erin Doherty from A Thousand Blows, hold some of the most contentious topics. Discussions about gender identity and attraction are tabled, going into dark water in search of truth. The specter of social expectations, embodied by a complicit audience, is watching throughout those moments. That need to be validated, accepted, and seen is all-consuming for Jamie, despite his circumstances. Perhaps the most terrifying thing about Adolescence is that compulsion, similar to doom-scrolling, that pushes people into doing anything for notoriety, including taking a life.

Adolescence Has Changed Everything

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Adolescence Review: A Heart-Wrenching Melodrama That Pulls No Punches (3)

Audiences will walk away from Adolescence rocked to their foundations. Not simply because of the performances or that sense of wonder that comes with originality. It speaks to a moment in time that never felt so prevalent, trying to forge a connection between generations through understanding. Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham have waded into deeper water by taking an unflinching approach to storytelling. The uncertainty of growing up in a world where everything is connected, everyone has an opinion, and words have the ability to do more than wound. Not only that, but Adolescence has the bravery to question an older generation over their parenting choices. Asking adults with Gen X blood pumping through their veins to take a look in the mirror and wonder whether anything could have been done differently.

Social media is constantly evolving, and with the advent of artificial intelligence, that will never change. It can be harnessed for good and benevolent reasons, bringing hope and prosperity to a new generation, or it can be used to corrupt and demean for personal gain. Adolescence is not just a conversation around one four-hour series on Netflix right now; it should be the beginning of a broader dialogue that affects social change. This show should not be celebrated simply for great performances and awe-inspiring technical achievements. Adolescence should find a way into classrooms and colleges to educate anyone who wants to listen. It is a call-to-arms for affirmative action that goes out to all those parents searching for common ground they can share with their children.

No one wants to believe they are capable of committing murder. Willing to take a life for the sake of being seen, being popular, or making an impact. The question of how accountable someone should feel when their children make that choice is another thing. As a parent, that sense of responsibility never stops and goes beyond the choices people make when it comes to having a family. However, Adolescence has declared an open season on audiences who play it safe. This drama has changed everything, and the involvement of Brad Pitt as an executive producer is a testament to that fact. Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne will be praised for lighting the blue touch paper on this topic, but this conversation is far from over.

Adolescence is now streaming on Netflix.