Not Based on a True Story
Jason Okundaye
When Adolescence was released on Netflix last month, it was pegged as an incisive inquiry into the manosphere and the ways that misogynist influencers like Andrew Tate are poisoning the minds of young boys. In fact the series is quite light on that, beyond parsing some red pill emojis and making a few references to podcasts. Should all under-sixteens be banned from smartphones and social media? The proposal is fervently discussed even though it’s obviously unworkable.
Right-wing online commentators meanwhile accused the programme of taking the cases of two real-life Black teenage killers of girls – Axel Rudakubana and Hassan Sentamu – and scapegoating white working-class boys by making them the face of such acts of violence. This has been an incredibly resilient fiction, despite the insistence of the show’s creators that ‘Jamie’s story, specifically, isn’t based on a real person or event.’
Keir Starmer, who has twice referred to Adolescence as a ‘documentary’ in a slip of the tongue, invited a writer and a producer from the series to Downing Street to discuss child protection. The people behind the show have done vital work in putting the radicalisation of boys and risk to girls at the top of the political agenda, but they are not experts in child protection. The invitation has encouraged sceptics to view the official embrace of the show as a piece of political theatre, like knighting Captain Tom or clapping for the NHS.
Adolescence has been compared to Mr Bates v. The Post Office, last year’s ITV series that dramatised the Post Office Horizon scandal and provoked a government response, with Rishi Sunak announcing legislation to exonerate postmasters who had been wrongly convicted and offering thousands in compensation. Government by television show is a depressing prospect. What does it take to get any kind of action on long-standing issues in this country? A compelling lead actor? A child plucked from obscurity giving the performance of his life? Intriguing camera work?
One of the differences between Adolescence and Mr Bates, though, is that the Post Office drama is focused on a real, definable miscarriage of justice. This is not to say that Adolescence doesn’t reflect a societal truth: that boys are vulnerable to online radicalisation, and this can enable very real acts of violence, particularly against girls. But it is imprecise, and it is not a fact-based drama. If anything, it has been stripped of factual elements to create something indistinct and universal, so that the offending boy, Jamie, could be anyone’s child, in anyone’s home. It is this that has made Adolescence such a cultural phenomenon: how does a normal boy from a happy home go on to repeatedly stab a girl to death? It unlocks the most primal anxieties of a parent, even those who have little reason to suspect that their child is capable of such evil.
This appeal to an idea of universality has helped the series take off, but as chairs are assembled around political roundtables, no one knows exactly what to do next. With the Mr Bates drama, compensation and legislation were very clear aims. Adolescence has a less certain pathway: aside from the unworkable suggestions to ban social media and smartphones, there’s nebulous talk of ‘male role models’ and ‘talking to boys’.
In 2014 and 2016, BBC Three broadcast the dramas Murdered by My Boyfriend and Murdered by My Father, the former based on a real-life domestic violence case, the latter assembled from instances of honour killing. What struck me about both series was the precision: even if Murdered by My Father wasn’t drawn from one particular case, it was culturally specific, taking account of the South Asian Muslim background of the violence it portrayed, and developed a clear storyboard of how a fixation on community shame can lead to such deadly consequences.
I’m not saying that the right-wing commentators are correct in wanting Jamie to have been replaced by a character with a background like Rudakubana or Sentamu’s. But the fact is that most teenage killers are nothing like Jamie, who has no history of offending or indications of a propensity towards violence beyond spending too much time in his bedroom tapping away at his computer.
Eighteen-year-old Nicholas Prosper, who murdered his mother and younger siblings, was obsessed with mass shootings at US high schools. Danyal Hussein, who had just turned 18 when he murdered sisters Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, had written a demonic contract signed with his own blood. Rudakubana, who murdered three children at a dance class in Southport, was obsessed with extreme violent material and had a ‘kill list’. One of Brianna Ghey’s murderers, Scarlett Jenkinson, had a fixation with serial killers; the other, Eddie Ratcliffe, a fascination for knives. The defence barrister for Sentamu, who murdered fifteen-year-old Elianne Andam with a kitchen knife, described his ‘violent streak’ as coming from his ‘lived experiences from when he was a little boy’.
Teenage killers, in other words, tend to be profoundly disturbed, detached in their home lives and fascinated with extreme violence. And in some instances, parents have been well aware of their children’s radicalisation but their attempts to get help for them have been futile. A week before he committed mass murder, Rudakubana’s father had stopped him from travelling to his old school to attack teachers and pupils there. He had also been referred to Prevent, the government’s anti-radicalisation programme, three times but wasn’t considered a serious enough threat. Prosper killed his mother, Juliana Falcon, when she confronted him as he was intending to carry out a school shooting.
In Adolescence, Jamie’s parents are oblivious to his radicalisation and taken aback by his crimes. Had they known, had Jamie already exhibited violent behaviour, perhaps abusing his sister and repeating far-right talking points aloud, what help could they have accessed? Is Prevent fit for purpose for tackling radicalisation? Are local council multi-agency services adequate? A mother in Northumberland says she ‘begged for help’ with her son’s violent behaviour and struggled to receive targeted support for his complex needs. Will she be invited to Downing Street to discuss how families with violent children can be supported in interventions? Perhaps if Lesley Manville is available to play her on television in season two.
Comments
Sign in or register to post a commentPersonally, I would actually have preferred it if had been based on a true story, and the conspiracy theories about it on Twitter are depressing but not unexpected, sadly.
But why is banning social media for under-sixteens "obviously unworkable" – so obviously this idea doesn't even require discussion?
See e.g. Ezra Klein talking to Jonathan Haidt on this:
But actually, we can. And we’re doing it. So I really want to make the point that we don’t have easy age verification now, but if we incentivize it, we’ll have it within a year.
Scott Galloway, my colleague at New York University, gives the example of how the social media companies, this industry, have put a lot of research and money into advertising. And so they figured out a way that, when you click a link anywhere on the internet and then the page loads — in between that time, there has been an auction among thousands of companies for the right to show you this particular ad. This is a miracle of technical innovation. And they did that because there was money in it.
And now the question is: Do you think maybe they could figure out if somebody is under 16 or over 16?
Also, that auction knows how old it thinks you are.
Yes, that’s right. Exactly. They know everything about us.
But they’re saying: The kids are going to lie. What are we supposed to do?
So we’re going to get age verification. Australia is pushing it. It’s going to work. It doesn’t have to be perfect at first, but within a few years it will be very good.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-jonathan-haidt.html
This technology is proving to be extremely harmful to children but at best many of us throw up our hands and say there's nothing we can do and at worst we actively push children onto these networks.
2 examples of the latter:
1) 24% of 3-4 year olds in the uk have a social media profile!!!
2) The educational publishing company I work for is producing a series of books teaching elementary school children to use tech, including social media. This includes practical lessons in which they sign up for and log in to social media accounts. When I (a proof editor) told them that it was illegal for social media companies to create accounts for under 13 year olds, they simply added a disclaimer saying this should be done under the supervision of a teacher or parent. Their argument was that kids are going to do this anyway so it's better we teach them how to do it correctly.