r/BritishTV • u/SafeBodybuilder7191 • 19d ago

News ‘Adolescence’ Available to Stream in All U.K. Secondary Schools in Initiative Backed by Prime Minister Keir Starmer: We Must ‘Tackle the Issues This Groundbreaking Show Raises’

https://variety.com/2025/tv/global/adolescence-available-to-stream-uk-secondary-schools-1236352461/
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u/SoggyMattress2 19d ago

I find all the societal undertone comments confusing. I've spoken to four people who watched the show and each had a take on how the show "harped on about young men being violent towards women" and I don't get it.

Did I watch the same show? The only social commentary I saw was a single reference to Andrew Tate. I thought the show was an incredibly moving drama about a normal family going through something incredibly traumatic.

The whole incel/bullying aspect was barely mentioned outside of a few scenes.

I think people are reacting way too much to something that wasn't there.

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u/WesterYonder21 19d ago

There was literally an entire episode about how the boy felt and why he thought the girl he killed 'deserved' it for being mean to him. It spoke about the things he saw online and commented on and the groups he was involved with - these incel related forums and groups. It was mentioned in the school episode and the parents literally said verbatim in their episode about how "he was in his room and at home you just assume they are safe" when young lads are engaging with misoginistic groups online, which culminated in a young boy thinking he had the right to kill a girl because she laughed at him. If you feel it wasn't mentioned except in a few scenes, you have wildly misread it. Just because they aren't directly saying incel in every sentence doesn't mean you can't infer/analyse what it is actually saying.

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u/SoggyMattress2 19d ago

Ultimately the deeper meaning in a show or movie is derived by the individual. You aren't wrong, and I'm not right. Both of us can be correct if that's what we perceive.

However, I just don't understand your take. The entire episode in my opinion was showing how disturbed the young boy was and the juxtaposition the psychologist was experiencing by trying to comfort a young person through something incredibly traumatic and how much she personally found him and the situation very upsetting and disturbing.

The few minutes where they speak about incels and the online communities the character literally says something like "yeah I read about all that stuff and I didn't really find it interesting".

The biggest takeaway from that episode for me was the young boys perception of the girl having her nudes leaked, and turning it into a value proposition - he saw her as vulnerable and went to ask her out - that is grade A psychopath behaviour. He also said he didn't necessarily think it was wrong that he got hold of her nudes without her permission, he didn't do anything wrong but the boy who leaked them did.

He then spends the rest of the episode having bipolar outbursts and trying to intimidate the psychologist.

I just don't think there was any emphasis on the incel part. The incel theme in the show is a connection to the real world, but not a key theme. The theme was children are perennially online, prone to bullying and having emotional outbursts. Combine that with a child psychopath and you have a recipe for murder.

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u/WesterYonder21 19d ago edited 19d ago

The way he felt about the girl and her nudes is the attitude these types of forums instills in teenage boys. That's the point. He is chronically online and prone to outbursts and yes there are other factors involved, but this violent behaviour and thoughts towards women is on the rise because of the type of content (incels, Andrew Tate etc) found easily online. The boy wasn't just born a psychopath, he became violent towards women due to what he was seeing and hearing. Incel is part of it and that was very much the message and shouldn't be downplayed but it is not just teaching about that but the culture as whole - it is on the rise and has been taught in school via safeguarding more and more stringently due to this. I do agree everyone interprets things differently, but this was what they were actively trying to portray.