The controversy on the series is even more intense in the United Kingdom

It sometimes happens that a random British television program suddenly derives from a huge world acclamation without a large advertising campaign to push it there, rather motivated by word of mouth. The best example of this is 2024 Baby meetingwhich has become a success and sparked real twists and turns and turns with competing with those of the series itself. The last example, AdolescenceHowever, was successful on a different scale. The drama in four parts, about a 13 -year -old boy named Jamie who is arrested for having murdered a girl in his school, has become one of the most popular series of Netflix of all time – what Foreign things Season 3 – In the first 17 days of its release.

Why is everyone watching this show? Part of the reason is that it is a very well done television element. Each episode is turned in a capture, and it is sensitively played by the unknown actor, Owen Cooper, who plays the role of Jamie, and Stephen Graham, who plays Jamie’s father and also co-written the series. But, apart from the quality, the subject of the program also struck a nerve. He offers a devastating and disturbing vision of what could motivate an apparently soft and innocent boy to take the life of another person, and follows how this act resonates in his family and his wider community. The show puts the blame on the toxic environment of misogyny to which young people are exhibited mainly online. The fact that Adolescence is particularly widely monitored here in the United Kingdom is not surprising. Knife crime has been a critical problem in the United Kingdom for many years now, because strict firearm laws mean that knives are the main weapon associated with fatal attacks. And violent misogyny has also been at the top of the agenda for some time, just like social media adolescents. The former football manager of England, Gareth Southgate, a popular figurehead here for male decency, has just spoken, as part of a prestigious annual series of BBC conferences, on the subject of toxic masculinity, to give you an idea of ​​the national mood at the moment.

But Adolescence We are not only talking about private viewers. The show has led the national conversation to the highest levels of recent weeks. It was discussed in the House of Commons, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer praising the program, saying that he is watching him with his teenagers and promising that the government would take measures such as adding specialized teams to the country’s police. AdolescenceThe other co-series, Jack Thorne, told the BBC that he wanted the show to be shown in schools and in Parliament, an initiative that Starmer and other politicians have argued. The show led to an increase in support for the idea of ​​banning social media for those under 16, and Kemi Badenoch, the conservative opposition chief, was largely crazy for giving an interview in which she said that she was not particularly interested in discussing the show.

But, as my colleague Rebecca Onion said, “it is a universally recognized truth that a piece of culture with a 100% rotten score and large Netflix issues is for lack of reaction.” And it turned out. Andrew Tate, who obtains a direct name verification in the series, and his army of unwashed supporters are not fans of the way he was represented. But there is also a wider and unpleasant right story that surrounds the spectacle. According to people like the conservative tweeter Ian Miles Cheong – and amplified on X by Elon Musk (Oh, he has an ill -informed opinion? What a surprise!) – History is a fiction of the fiction of the murders in 2024 of three girls with Southport who were committed by a black adolescent. According to this conspiracy theory, writers have changed the protagonist’s race because of your friend and mine: awake. This apparently makes an “anti-white propaganda”. THE Adolescence Writers retaliated against this accusation, saying that the show was inspired by widespread incidents where young boys attacked young girls and affirming the fact that knife crime is not only associated with non -white attackers. And so we must all endure another blow on the merry -go -round of cultural wars.

Adolescence is an extraordinary television. But I feel a little pain about the speech that surrounds him. I would find it difficult to say that it is a bad Something that Keir Starmer gives speeches in Parliament on the need to fight against the misogyny of young people and crime to the knife. These are real deep problems. But there is also something dark in the fact that it has become the role of Netflix to put these things on the agenda. Yes, pioneering television dramas that make a real difference exist. We have a particularly rich tradition here in the United Kingdom – last year, a dramatization of a miscarriage of justice who saw hundreds of postal posts wrongly pursued for fraud due to the failure of a post office system, called Mr. Bates vs the post officehas led to new legislation to exempt workers, and the post office was forced to offer them compensation. Specific questions raised in AdolescenceHowever, seem so much more complex and intractable than a scandal in an organization. Is it enough for the Prime Minister to recommend the program? Is it sufficient to ban social media for adolescents? Is it sufficient to adopt additional legislation against knives? Is it enough to speak more to adolescents of misogyny? Where is all this responsibility? With individual figures in the Manosphere? With parents? With schools? With the government? With social media platforms? With… streaming services?

There are no easy answers to these questions. The fact that people ask them now is good, but it should not start, or finish, with a TV to show.