Warning: This post contains spoilers for Adolescence
Adolescence, streaming on Netflix, is more about a tragic loss of adolescence. The show opens with police in a northern English town bursting into the bedroom of 13-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) and arresting him because he’s suspected of stabbing a female classmate named Katie to death. 
Over four episodes, the Miller family is run through the wringer as they are catapulted into the criminal justice system. The show, which was filmed in one continuous shot and makes viewers feel like they are in the middle of the chaos, touches on ever-relevant themes like the dangers of social media and society’s expectations of what it means to be masculine.
Here’s what to know about Adolescence.
The central questions in Adolescence
Jamie initially denies he has done anything wrong, until Detective Inspector Bascombe (Ashley Walters) shows him security footage of him stabbing Katie to death, proof that he did kill her. Then, the main question becomes one of motive as authorities try to figure out why Jamie killed Katie and look for the murder weapon. As the police question Jamie, they also comb through dozens of social media posts that he and Katie exchanged to decode the nature of their relationship.
What happens in Adolescence
A large chunk of the first episode goes through the tedious procedures of entering the criminal justice system—the questioning, the fingerprints, walking up and down stairs to various rooms. And yet, the viewer is hooked, invested in seeing what happens to Jamie after he is arrested.
In the second episode, we learn a bit more about how the investigation unfolds when Detective Inspector Bascombe visits Jamie’s school, which his own son Adam also attends, to look for information about the murder weapon. While Bascombe is there, Adam alerts his dad to the pejorative meaning behind some emojis that Katie was sending to Jamie on Instagram, prompting the detective to start looking into whether Jamie might have been cyber-bullied. For Bascombe, there is a silver lining—he’s always had trouble connecting with Adam, and the case brings them closer together.
In the third episode, Erin Doherty plays Briony Ariston, who is tasked with producing a psychological assessment of Jamie. During the interview, Jamie reveals that he had tried to ask Katie out after a photo of her topless was circulated to classmates via Snapchat as a type of revenge porn. He appears to have asked her out to make her feel better, but says Katie rejected his advances and then proceeded to send him the emojis attacking him for asking her out. He says she falsely accused him of being an “incel,” or involuntary celibate, referring to an online community of men who are frustrated that they aren’t having sex.
The show suggests that Jamie killed Katie because she hurt his feelings.
What Adolescence says about incel culture
Based his schoolmates’ use of emojis on Instagram, Bascombe’s son Adam believes Katie was accusing Jamie of being an incel, a misogynistic community popular online with men’s rights activists that bonds over being rejected by women.
Bascombe is stunned, exclaiming, “He’s 13! How can he be an involuntary celibate at 13?”
Adam replies, “She’s saying he always will be. That’s when they say ‘you’re an ‘incel.’ You’re going to be a virgin forever,” noting other users were agreeing with her.
There are notable examples of incels who have committed acts of violence, like Alek Minassian, who killed 10 pedestrians when he drove through a walkway in Toronto in 2018. He was inspired by Elliot Rodger, who carried out a 2014 murderous rampage that left six dead and 13 wounded near UC Santa Barbara and documented his rage against women who refused his advances.
Adam explains that his classmates like to say that 80% of women are attracted to 20% of men, underscoring the pressure that young men are under when they start to have feelings for female classmates. Especially in the #MeToo era, men are still navigating how to properly approach women in a society that generally allows them the freedom to choose who they want to go out with—but that doesn’t excuse violence. And unlike their parents, they can use social media to access a lot more information that’s not necessarily age-appropriate.
Director Philip Barantini, who has a seven-year-old daughter, hopes that the show will makes viewers more sympathetic to what young people are going through today, explaining in the press notes, “When I was growing up, if you had a problem with someone, you sorted it out in the playground then went home and forgot about it, but now social media makes that impossible.”
The remarkable effect of Adolescence’s one-shot approach
The movie takes place over 13 months, and it was shot in one continuous take, heightening the feeling of drama on screen.
“Basically, that means we press record on the camera and we don’t press stop until the very end of the hour,” Barantini says in the press notes.
As part of weeks of rehearsals, Barantini and cinematographer Matt Lewis constructed miniature models of the set and moved miniature versions of the actors around so they could know exactly how to direct the camera every step of the way.
“I really enjoyed it, and now I think I’ll always prefer it and I’d love to do one shot again,” Owen Cooper, 14, who played Jamie in his first film role, said in the press notes.
Other actors also say that the one-shot approach brought them closer together. Doherty, who plays the psychologist, had never filmed in one shot before and said she and Cooper “felt vulnerable” and “the nerves bonded us.”
How Adolescence ends
The fourth and final episode moves a bit beyond Jamie and looks at how his detention affects his parents.
It takes place on Jamie’s father Eddie’s birthday. But it’s not a happy day at all because Eddie wakes up to find the van for his plumbing business has been vandalized. His family tries to cheer him up on the way to the store to buy removal materials. A smile breaks out on his face when his wife (Christine Tremarco) gives her daughter Lisa (Amelie Pease) an overview of how they met.
But Eddie’s birthday gets worse when he gets a call from Jamie in prison on the ride back home. Jamie wanted to call to wish his dad a happy birthday and also to tell him that he is going to plead guilty to killing Katie, the first time viewers learn how he’s going to plead. Jamie only appears as a disembodied voice in the last episode.
Back home, the parents go back and forth about what they could have done better as parents to prevent this situation—rehashing a conversation they have had many times since Jamie was taken away. Eddie repeatedly assures his wife that there is nothing they could have done better, that they couldn’t be watching him every minute. The episode ends with both parents in tears.
