Table of Contents

Premise
Cast and characters
Main
Guest
Episodes
Production
Development
Casting
Filming
Release
Reception
Critical response
Viewership
Political impact
Accolades
See also
Notes
References
External links

Adolescence (TV series)

Image
CaptionPromotional poster
DirectorPhilip Barantini
CountryUnited Kingdom
United States
LanguageEnglish
Num Episodes4
ProducerJo Johnson
CinematographyMatthew Lewis
Runtime51–65 minutes
NetworkNetflix
Released2025-3-13

Adolescence is a British psychological crime drama television series created by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham and directed by Philip Barantini. It centres on a 13-year-old schoolboy, Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper), who is arrested after the murder of a girl in his school. Each of its episodes was shot in one continuous take.

It premiered on Netflix on 13 March 2025, to critical acclaim for its directing, writing, and cinematography, with special attention paid to its atmosphere and performances. Adolescence was the first streaming show to place at the top of the Barb Audiences weekly television ratings, and received thirteen nominations at the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards, winning for Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series and Outstanding Directing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for Barantini, in addition to acting wins for Lead Actor (Graham), Supporting Actor (Cooper), and Supporting Actress (Erin Doherty).

On 9 April 2025, Deadline Hollywood reported that Netflix and Plan B Entertainment were in talks about creating a second season.

Premise

In a town near Doncaster, armed police raid a family home and arrest 13-year-old Jamie Miller on suspicion of the murder of his classmate Katie Leonard, who is later revealed to have rejected his romantic advances and then cyberbullied him. Jamie is held at a police station for questioning and then remanded in custody at a secure training centre. Investigations at Jamie's school and interviews by a forensic psychologist uncover his manosphere-influenced views on women and the mockery he has received on social media. At home, his family deals with community backlash as they work together to cope with his arrest.

Cast and characters

Main


Guest


Episodes

Production

Development

Adolescence was originally conceived by Stephen Graham as a response to cases of knife crime by male teenagers in the United Kingdom, including the then-recent (2021 and 2023) murders of Ava White, Elianne Andam, and Brianna Ghey. He decided to create a drama exploring the motivation of extreme acts of violence against girls by young boys, and collaborated with screenwriter Jack Thorne. Thorne has stated that no part of the drama is based on a specific true story. Speaking on BBC Radio 4's arts programme Front Row, Thorne stated that the two writers wanted to "look in the eye of modern male rage" and examine the influence of public figures such as Andrew Tate on boys.

The series was announced in March 2024 with the working title Adolescence to be written by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham. It is a four-part limited crime drama told in a real-time, one-shot style, with Philip Barantini as director. Barantini and Graham previously collaborated on Boiling Point (2021), which was also shot in one take. Warp Films, Matriarch Productions and Plan B Entertainment produced the series for Netflix. Jo Johnson is series producer, and Graham, Thorne and Barantini are executive producers alongside Mark Herbert, Emily Feller, Hannah Walters, Brad Pitt, Jeremy Kleiner, Dede Gardner and Nina Wolarsky.

Casting

Owen Cooper was cast in the role of the teenage murder suspect, Jamie Miller, at the age of 13, with no previous professional acting experience. Casting director Shaheen Baig had considered 500 boys for the part, but Cooper attracted her attention after sending her a demo tape and secured the role. Baig found Cooper and several of the other young cast members through Drama MOB in Manchester and Articulate Drama School and Agency in Bradford. Staff members of these drama schools, which serve students from underrepresented and deprived communities, resented the narrative that these actors had "done nothing and came from nowhere" prior to this production.

Filming

Graham, Cooper, Ashley Walters, and Erin Doherty star. Filming began in the United Kingdom in July 2024 and finished around October 2024.

Adolescence is noted for its extensive use of one-shot filming, as each episode is shot in one take by cinematographer Matthew Lewis. Shooting was planned through multiple rehearsals building up to full technical run-throughs, during which the director of photography would plan camera movements. Each one-hour episode was shot around 10 times, with two takes per day. Episodes were shown as completed in one take, with no cuts or blending of shots together with CGI. Graham said that each episode took three weeks in total. The takes used were as follows: first episode, 2nd take; second episode, 13th take; third episode, 12th take; fourth episode, 16th take. The episodes were not shot in chronological order: Cooper's first day on set was shooting episode 3.

Filming locations for Adolescence included South Kirkby, South Elmsall and Sheffield in Yorkshire. Minsthorpe Community College in South Elmsall was used as a location for the school scenes in episode 2, filmed over 1 week during 2024's summer. The interior scenes at the police station were shot at a specially constructed film set at the Production Park studio facility in South Kirkby in order to accommodate the complexities of single-shot filming.

Release

The series was released on Netflix on 13 March 2025. It became the most watched streaming television show in the United Kingdom in a single week, beating the record set by the Netflix series Fool Me Once in January 2024.

Adolescence has seen significant viewership success on Netflix following its release. In its first three weeks, the series garnered 96.7 million views on the platform. For the week ending 30 March 2025, it recorded 30.4 million views and ranked in the top 10 most-watched lists across all 93 countries tracked by Netflix's top 10 metrics. This performance has placed Adolescence ninth on Netflix's all-time viewership list, which is based on viewership data collected over the first 91 days of a title's availability.

Reception

Critical response

Adolescence has been widely praised by critics. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, calculated a score of 91 out of 100, based on 29 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".

Writing in The Guardian, Lucy Mangan stated that Adolescence was "the closest thing to TV perfection in decades", singling out the acting by Cooper and Doherty for particular praise. Nandini Balial of RogerEbert.com also praised Cooper's acting for capturing "the quicksilver nature of those fraught years between childhood and adulthood". Anita Singh of The Daily Telegraph found the series to be "quietly devastating" and the acting to be "phenomenal", although she said that the single-take filming technique could feel "like a gimmick". Sophie Butcher of Empire praised the continuous shooting, stating that it was "the most dizzying TV feat of the year" which served to enhance the on-screen emotion.

Adolescence was the first streaming show to attain the top of the Barb Audiences weekly television ratings.

Viewership

According to data from Showlabs, Adolescence ranked first on Netflix in the United States during the week of 17–23 March 2025.

Political impact

Prime Minister Keir Starmer holding a round table with the creators of the show on 31 March 2025.

According to The Guardian, the show highlights the ways in which the manosphere has affected adolescent boys, with characters directly naming Andrew Tate and the "red pill" community as key influences on Jamie and other boys his age. Anneliese Midgley, a Member of Parliament, called for the series to be screened to Parliament and in schools, claiming it could help counter misogyny and violence against women and girls. Prime Minister Keir Starmer backed the call, writing on Twitter, "As a father, watching Adolescence with my teenage son and daughter hit home hard." The show was made free for viewing in UK secondary schools after Starmer's backing.

In March 2025, businessman and Trump administration advisor Elon Musk labeled the show as "anti-white propaganda" owing to the casting a white actor to portray Jamie. The theory alleged that the show was based on the 2024 Southport stabbings, whose perpetrator was Black British, and that depicting the perpetrator as white was an intentional choice to demonise white people. Co-writer Jack Thorne called the claim "ridiculous" and stated that the television series was inspired by but not directly based on any real-life events. The show itself was written several months prior to the Southport attack, though the attack occurred early during filming, before episode 2 (the show was not filmed chronologically).

Accolades

In 2025, Owen Cooper, for his performance as teen murderer Jamie Miller, won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie, making him the youngest male winner in the history of the Primetime Emmy Awards.

AwardDate of ceremonyCategoryRecipient(s)Result
AACTA Awards6 February 2026Audience Choice Award for Favourite TV SeriesAdolescence
AACTA International Awards6 February 2026Best Drama Series
Best Actor in a SeriesOwen Cooper
Stephen Graham
Best Actress in a SeriesErin Doherty
AARP Movies for Grownups Awards10 January 2026Best TV Series or Limited SeriesAdolescence
Best Actor – TelevisionStephen Graham
Actor Awards1 March 2026Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Limited SeriesOwen Cooper
Stephen Graham
Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Limited SeriesErin Doherty
Christine Tremarco
American Film Institute Awards4 December 2025Top 10 Television ProgramsAdolescence
American Society of Cinematographers8 March 2026Limited or Anthology Series or Motion Picture Made for TelevisionMatthew Lewis (for "Episode 2")
Art Directors Guild Awards28 February 2026Television Movie or Limited SeriesAdam Tomlinson
Artios Awards26 February 2026Limited SeriesShaheen Baig
Astra Awards11 June 2025Best Limited SeriesAdolescence

Best Actor in a Limited Series or TV MovieStephen Graham
Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or TV MovieOwen Cooper
Ashley Walters
Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Streaming MovieErin Doherty
Best Directing in a Limited Series or TV MoviePhilip Barantini (for "Episode 3")
Best Writing in a Limited Series or TV MovieJack Thorne and Stephen Graham (for "Episode 3")
Best Cast Ensemble in a Limited Series or TV MovieAdolescence
11 December 2025Best Casting – Television
British Society of Cinematographers7 February 2026Best Cinematography in a Television Drama (International/Streaming)Matthew Lewis (for "Episode 2")
Cinema Audio Society Awards7 March 2026Non-Theatrical Motion Pictures or Limited SeriesKiff McManus and Rob Entwistle (production mixers); Jules Woods and James Drake (re-recording mixers); Mike Tehrani and Simon Diggins (ADR mixers); Adam Méndez (foley mixer) (for "Episode 1")
Critics' Choice Awards4 January 2026Best Limited SeriesAdolescence
Best Actor in a Limited Series or Movie Made for TelevisionStephen Graham
Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie Made for TelevisionOwen Cooper
Ashley Walters
Best Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie Made for TelevisionErin Doherty
Christine Tremarco
Film Independent Spirit Awards15 February 2026Best New Scripted SeriesJack Thorne, Stephen Graham, Philip Barantini, Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Nina Wolarsky, Hannah Walters, Mark Herbert, Emily Feller, Carina Sposato, Niall Shamma, and Peter Balm
Best Lead Performance in a New Scripted SeriesStephen Graham
Best Supporting Performance in a New Scripted SeriesErin Doherty
Best Breakthrough Performance in a New Scripted SeriesOwen Cooper
Golden Globe Awards11 January 2026Best Limited Series, Anthology Series, or Motion Picture Made for TelevisionAdolescence

Best Actor in a Limited Series, Anthology Series, or Motion Picture Made for TelevisionStephen Graham
Best Supporting Actor on TelevisionOwen Cooper
Ashley Walters
Best Supporting Actress on TelevisionErin Doherty
Golden Reel Awards8 March 2026Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing – Broadcast Long Form Dialogue / ADRJames Drake (supervising sound editor), Emma Butt (ADR editor), and Michele Woods (dialogue editor) (for "Episode 2")
Gotham TV Awards2 June 2025Breakthrough Limited SeriesAdolescence
Outstanding Lead Performance in a Limited SeriesStephen Graham
Outstanding Supporting Performance in a Limited SeriesOwen Cooper
Erin Doherty
Hollywood Music in Media Awards19 November 2025Original Score – TV Show/Limited SeriesAaron May and David Ridley
Location Managers Guild International Awards23 August 2025Outstanding Locations in a Television Anthology, Mow, or Limited SeriesAdolescence
National Television Awards10 September 2025New Drama
Drama PerformanceOwen Cooper
Stephen Graham
Primetime Emmy Awards6 September 2025Outstanding Casting for a Limited or Anthology Series or MovieShaheen Baig

Outstanding Cinematography for a Limited or Anthology Series or MovieMatthew Lewis (for "Episode 2")
Outstanding Contemporary Costumes for a Limited or Anthology Series or MovieJessica Schofield, William Maher, and Tracey Cliffe (for "Episode 2")
Outstanding Short Form Nonfiction or Reality SeriesKelly Caton, Jordan Anderson, Bram De Jonghe, Kia Milan, Nyle Washington, and Simon Richards
Outstanding Sound Editing for a Limited or Anthology Series, Movie or SpecialJames Drake, Michele Woods, Emma Butt, Rob Davidson, Jessica Watkins, Oli Ferris, and Sue Harding (for "Episode 1")
Outstanding Sound Mixing for a Limited or Anthology Series or MovieJules Woods, Kiff McManus, Rob Entwistle, and Adam Méndez (for "Episode 1")
14 September 2025Outstanding Limited or Anthology SeriesMark Herbert, Emily Feller, Hannah Walters, Stephen Graham, Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Nina Wolarsky, Jack Thorne, Philip Barantini, Carina Sposato, Niall Shamma, Peter Balm, and Jo Johnson
Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or MovieStephen Graham
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or MovieOwen Cooper (for "Episode 3")
Ashley Walters (for "Episode 2")
Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or MovieErin Doherty (for "Episode 3")
Christine Tremarco (for "Episode 4")
Outstanding Directing for a Limited or Anthology Series or MoviePhilip Barantini
Outstanding Writing for a Limited or Anthology Series or MovieJack Thorne and Stephen Graham
Producers Guild of America Awards28 February 2026David L. Wolper Award for Outstanding Producer of Limited or Anthology Series TelevisionAdolescence
Outstanding Short-Form ProgramAdolescence: The Making of Adolescence
Satellite Awards8 March 2026Best Miniseries & Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for TelevisionAdolescence
Best Actor in a Miniseries, Limited Series, or Motion Picture Made for TelevisionStephen Graham
Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Miniseries & Limited Series, or Motion Picture Made for TelevisionOwen Cooper
Best Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Miniseries & Limited Series, or Motion Picture Made for TelevisionErin Doherty
Seoul International Drama Awards2 October 2025Grand PrizeAdolescence
Best Miniseries
Best DirectorPhilip Barantini
Best ScreenwriterStephen Graham
Best ActorOwen Cooper
Television Critics Association Awards20 August 2025Program of the YearAdolescence
Outstanding Achievement in Movies, Miniseries or Specials
Individual Achievement in DramaOwen Cooper
Stephen Graham

See also


Notes

References


External links


Category:2020s British crime drama television series
Category:2020s British television miniseries
Category:2025 British television series debuts
Category:2025 British television series endings
Category:Best Miniseries or Television Movie Golden Globe winners
Category:British English-language television shows
Category:British television series about teenagers
Category:Casting controversies in television
Category:Crime and children
Category:Conspiracy theories involving race and ethnicity
Category:Manosphere
Category:Murder committed by minors
Category:Netflix television dramas
Category:Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries winners
Category:Psychological television series
Category:Race-related controversies in television
Category:Race-related controversies in the United States
Category:Television series about school bullying
Category:Television shows set in South Yorkshire
Category:Television shows about murder
Category:Television shows shot in Yorkshire
Category:Works about cyberbullying
Category:Works about incel subculture
Category:Works about violence against women