Roisin Gorman: ‘I’ve just binged Adolescence – I need to lie down and watch cat videos’

For anyone who’s been living under a rock, it’s the Netflix drama about a 13-year-old boy who stabs a schoolgirl. After watching it you might want to crawl back under the rock.

The mystery is not who carried out the murder. That’s revealed early on in four hours of drama which is often so raw it took my heart a few minutes to stop pounding.

The question is why a young boy from an ordinary, loving family is motivated to commit murder in a series which skips from knife crime to toxic masculinity via cyberbullying and online misogyny.

It’s been described as important, powerful, thought-provoking, and it is all of the above.

Anyone who’s currently got a young son upstairs on a screen of any description who thinks they’re safe because they’re at home is about to have their assumptions shattered.

If we’re to believe the script from actor Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne, boys are at risk in a bewildering ‘manosphere’ where emojis can destroy their confidence at a stroke and the 80/20 ratio preaches that 80 per cent of women are attracted to 20 per cent of men.

But Andrew Tate is as old hat as skinny jeans and scrunchies because that twitching ball of misogynistic madness is nowhere near the worst thing boys are exposed to.

And if you’re not depressed enough, the reality is even more grim.

The UK’s Centre for Social Justice released its Lost Boys report last month which makes Adolescence look like Neighbours.

It reports that children first see porn at an average age of 13, some as young as nine, the most popular of which shows acts of violence against women. A friend who worked in sexual health was astounded at the amount of female teenage clients with no lady gardens, who explained that boys, with sexual appetites reared on porn, had never seen pubic hair on a woman.

Over 90 per cent of sextortion victims are male, according to the Internet Watch Foundation, with the majority aged between 14 and 17, already struggling with sex and identity, and then cast into a pit of shame by ruthless international criminals.

In the UK, there are 2.5 million children with no father figure, and almost half of first children don’t live with both their natural parents. Boys are more likely to have a smartphone than a dad.

They’re also more likely to struggle with gaming addiction. The UK’s National Centre for Gaming Disorder was set up in 2020 and 90 per cent of its clients are male.

So far, so awful.

What’s also truly concerning is how much of the blame for this dysfunction is heaped on women among boys whose social media algorithm feeds them a staple diet of misogyny and violence.

An international study revealed that 60 per cent of men across 31 countries think women’s equality discriminates against them, while the ‘incel’ culture of involuntary celibates blames women for not being attracted to them.

The motivation of murderous teenager Jamie in Adolescence is never fully explained but it’s partly his rejection by his female victim, and his heartbreaking belief that he’s weak and ugly.

His portrayal by 15-year-old newcomer Owen Cooper is astounding, from baby-faced denial and confusion to full-on screaming aggression, but the show belongs to Stephen Graham, who can emote more with one eye bag than many actors manage in a lifetime.

I have one gripe, and it’s a technical one, about the one-take filming. Each of the four episodes is one continuous shot which is clearly a cinematographer’s fantasy of technical genius but means nothing to the viewer. It’s like Stephen King devoting a novel to the brilliance of the semi colon.

The result is lots of walking shots in a police station, in a school, and driving shots in a van. I’ve never wished for more drama and fewer views of the back of an actor’s head.

The third episode, depicting a session with Jamie and a psychologist is a marathon of revolving camera, which has spawned a thousand internet theories about the symbolism of the half sandwich she gives him. I clearly wasn’t the only one who was occasionally bored.

The drama has led to a call from Simon Harris for it to be shown in schools in Ireland, and Netflix will allow it to be screened in schools in England after a similar response from Keir Starmer.

I think they’re missing the point.

Schoolkids know what they’re going through, and presumably the TikTok generation with the attention span of a gnat will not appreciate the long TV lecture, however cinematic it is. They’re clearly suffering enough without four hours of grimness.

It’s parents who need to get a glimpse into what’s going on right now in their own homes, to their own sons. And by extension to our daughters, who will be growing up in an increasingly hostile world which views equal treatment of women as a blow against men.

I’m glad(ish) I watched Adolescence. Now I’m going to hug my boy.