One of the lamentable side effects of dissecting liberal media narratives as a job is that consuming pop culture recreationally while suspending disbelief becomes impossible; I am too intimately acquainted with how the mass media machine strategically weaponizes ostensibly pure entertainment for political ends — often, as the most effective propaganda does, without tipping off the audience to the agenda.
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Within the first ten minutes of the first episode of “Adolescence,” I turned to my wife and basically summarized the plot: this kid got radicalized on the internet by Andrew Tate, specifically, and people like him generally in the “manosphere,” which led him to stab his female classmate in a fit of misogynistic rage.
She accused me of having read about the series beforehand.I assured her that I hadn’t; these narrative threads are remarkably transparent once you get a read on them.
About ten minutes into the second episode, as the diverse detectives canvass the school looking for clues as to what drove the thirteen-year-old protagonist to commit murder, Tate’s name came up, right on cue, as the instigating factor.
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In a case of life imitating art — not wishing to waste the cultural capital provided by the series — UK state media seized on the series' popular viewership to promote real-life “reforms” in the public school system.
Via BBC (emphasis added):
In response to the hit Netflix series Adolescence, a Brighton mother has told the BBC she withdrew her son from school as she was so concerned about violence, misogyny, racism and homophobia.
Her 14-year-old son, who is now home-schooled, said: "Girls weren't really treated equally, it was like they were not really humans."
Secondary school staff have also spoken out about the "avalanche" of issues in schools caused by social media, misogynistic behaviour and toxic masculinity.
The Department for Education said it had issued guidance on incel (involuntarily celibate) culture to teachers aimed at recognising signs of students engaging in misogynistic content and providing safeguarding advice…
Adolescence has sparked a national conversation about the dangers of social media, knife crime*, toxic influencers and the rise of misogyny in schools…
The boy we spoke to said there was a lack of role models both in school and generally which encouraged boys to turn to social media and figures such as Andrew Tate, a self-proclaimed misogynist.
Knife crime!
Somehow, I don’t imagine feral migrants living it up in government-subsidized five-star hotels, stabbing and raping British girls for recreation instead of working, are going to figure into that “national conversation” about crime and misogyny if the BBC has anything to say about it.
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(Perhaps apropos or perhaps not — the police claim the alleged offense was “of an incredibly serious nature” — a hijab-clad Gestapo and her ditzy partner recently showed up at a house in the Midlands to seize a phone from a teenage girl over alleged social media posts. The exchange is the stuff of nanny-state nightmares.)
UK: After posting the video of the two West Midland Police officers #29500 and #29110 attempting to confiscate the phone of a child for watching a social media post I deleted it assuming it had to be a skit. I reached out to the West Midlands Police department and when they would… pic.twitter.com/UvZuqjnjvf
— @amuse (@amuse) September 21, 2025
Anyway, blatant propaganda aside, the actor portraying the incel Tate-protégé protagonist put on a superb performance, especially in the psychologist interrogation scene.
The cinematography was sublime; every hour-long episode was shot in a continuous shot, never breaking a single time.
Compare that with President Biden's nine jump cuts in 38 seconds just to get through some basic talking points, and how they managed to orchestrate such a feat boggles the mind.
New Biden video featuring 9 jump cuts in 38 seconds.
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) July 1, 2024
He looks awful. Words are slurry. He misquotes the Declaration for woke points.
The lighting is terrible. Unflattering angles.
The entire thing is just an absolute mess.
So, entirely fitting.pic.twitter.com/iQjHIroCnp
Also, the series is replete with the adorable and quaint Cockney accent — “love” as a second-person reference at the end of a sentence, lots of gratuitous “innits,” etc.
Neoliberal indoctrination attempts notwithstanding, for those reasons alone — the kid’s acting, the camera work, and the linguistic styling — Adolescence was worth a watch.
