This article contains spoilers!
When a child commits a crime, who is at fault? Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham’s breathtaking new mini-series Adolescence, attempts to answer this difficult question. Simply stated, there is no way to oversell this phenomenal drama. It is uncomfortable, disturbing, terrifying, and yet it never even borders dystopian. In only four hour-long episodes a horrifying story unfolds: a 13-year-old boy is accused of the violent murder of his female classmate and bully. There is no build-up, no preparation for the awful scenario. Within minutes of the first episode, armed police burst through the door of the family’s home to detain the middle schooler.
Co-director Jack Thorne articulates the goal of the show: “Don’t put this in the extraordinary, make this feel like it could happen to you.” To achieve this, the casting, particularly of the main character, Jamie Miller, is crucial and done exceptionally well. Actor Owen Cooper manages to convey the disturbing idiosyncrasies of a teenage murderer paired with the typical experience of a developing young boy. The manner in which Cooper does so without ever appearing truly monstrous requires true skill. His appearance is so innocent—full cheeks, dotted freckles, and boyish pajamas—that while watching the initial arrest, viewers are certain he is incapable of committing such a heinous crime. This naivety is intentional and extremely necessary to the storyline.
The teenage murderer does not resemble the road-kill-obsessed child that became serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, nor the crazed adolescent Ted Bundy. Such distinctions would have placed a divide between the audience and the subject, making them feel as if they could predict or even attempt to understand where it all went wrong for Miller.
He could not resemble such disturbed killers because he was not them. His innocence is not only an essential part of making him accessible to the audience but is also an accurate reflection of parts of his character. When co-director and actor in the series, Stephen Graham, describes the inspiration for the show—an uptick in young boys stabbing young girls across England—he stresses that he would not call the murderers “young men” because they were not. In doing so, he reclaims their innocence, and that reclamation is a constant presence in the drama. It forces audience members to grapple with the fact that a child could commit such a crime.
Once the plot feels conceivable to an everyday audience, the question becomes this: why? What could have motivated the brutal stabbing of a young girl? At what point was Jamie’s character corrupted? Was he always capable of such violence? Who failed him, and where did it all go wrong?
The show is brave enough to leave the answers ambiguous. They merely present Miller’s experience with each episode offering a different view of his life: his arrest, his school, his interview, and his family. When asked about the show, Stephen Graham explains that he wanted to explore the idea that it takes a village to raise a child and then explore how that village could also fail them. Maybe there is no answer, no definitive “why,” simply a collection of failed attempts to support a young boy.
So, when a child commits a crime, who is at fault? Graham says, “I’m not blaming anyone. I just thought, maybe we’re all accountable and we should have a conversation about it.” That is just what Adolescence intends to do.
