- Network: Netflix
- Series Premiere Date: Mar 13, 2025
Critic Reviews
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Every second that passes on the mini-series feels like it belongs, with no time wasted, and a sensation is felt upon a difficult-to-describe conclusion. It could very well be what someone emerging from the other side of trauma can only begin to articulate, or possibly this is what’s left behind in the wake of viewing landmark television. “Adolescence” is just that.
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At no point does Adolescence pretend to have landed on a single, solid answer about why boys like Jamie exist, where all their rage comes from, or why so much of it seems to be directed at women. It simply makes us sit with the awful uncertainty of it all.
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Some of the best television of the year. .... Adolescence inflicts a mood of subtle devastation that’s very difficult to shake, even long after you’ve finished watching the series.
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An emotional powerhouse that sneaks up and floors you. The young TV season sets a new gold standard with a drama series that is sure to rank with the year's very best. Polish up Emmys for Stephen Graham and Owen Cooper as the father and son at the heart of a tragedy.
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Far more grown-up than its name might suggest, Adolescence is a triumph of creative and technical artistry where the ‘gimmick’ at hand elevates it to one of the year’s finest.
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Adolescence (Netflix) is brilliant. I can put it no other way. Every beat, every remark, every glance between characters, every angry or teary outburst in this four-part drama — each episode shot in one continuous take — is laden with authenticity and it is terrifying. .... A storytelling masterclass.
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Gutting, raw and stunningly acted, “Adolescence” highlights how we’ve failed ourselves and will continually fail the generations coming behind us.
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Quibbles aside, Adolescence has already cemented itself as one of the year's most impressive shows, with many an award surely coming its way, and its importance cannot be overstated. Graham and Thorne's drama should be mandatory viewing, particularly for boys and their parents; Adolescence should be added to the national curriculum without delay.
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No one will want to watch this series, but that is precisely why everyone should.
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Its refusal to offer easy get‑outs (no abusive parents, no dark family secrets), no clear explanation as to what leads one boy to murder and others not, feels brave and real.
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It’s nothing less than a miracle that the storytelling shines through the chaos of a very realistic high school. But it’s the third episode that makes Adolescence such an unsettling, chilling watch. .... Erin Doherty (A Thousand Blows, The Crown) gives an outstanding performance as one shrink, the whole episode swirling around her conversation with her subject. Cooper, too, is marvellous.
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This is not an easy watch. .... But in what Adolescence has to say, and in how eloquently and audaciously it says it, it’s also among the very best things — and an early contender for the best thing — you will see on the small screen this year.
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It is a drama so quietly devastating that I won’t forget it for a very long time.
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Rather than ask who among us could be capable of such violence, the series examines why so many boys are growing up to be angry, misogynistic men. That means less of a focus on mystery and more attention to societal issues, but the relentless pace and commanding performances are powerful enough to overwhelm any sense of absence.
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Overall, “Adolescence” is an addictive but impossibly hard watch, made even more compelling by terrific acting and an intense story that raises relevant questions about society today.
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It's not always an easy watch, made possible by captivating performances and a unique presentation that works well for what's being shown.
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The harrowing result demands your attention in exactly the way that disposable “second-screen entertainment” has all but abandoned.
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The choreography of camera and bodies, should you care to contemplate it, is remarkable, navigating crowds and corridors and public places with impossible grace. Long, uninterrupted scenes also allow a superb cast to dive into character and the moment. .... And if the series doesn’t wind down to a traditional conclusion, it achieves a novelistic power in the end.
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The performances here are superb, with varsity weeping and real sense of heft and verisimilitude. Is it a weird time to engage in recreational misery? When there’s so much free, ambient despair to go around? Yeah, probably, but “Adolescence” is not agony for agony’s sake. It uses its pain and shock as a side door into interesting questions and social critiques.
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Adolescence isn’t just an entertaining series (though it is, in some warped way); it’s one of the most important series I've seen in a long time.
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The most impactful thing about Adolescence is how it feels like just one of these stories of lost youth. In that sense, it’s not a statement or a solution. But it will crush your heart nonetheless.
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This important and affecting series highlights broader issues: boys in search of an identity, and technology dividing children from their parents. Eddie has never even glanced at his son’s socials.
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Because of the shooting style, each promises to have the same intensity as the first episode, and we’re looking forward to seeing just how the case — which at first blush, looks like it’s a pretty strong one against Jamie — tests everyone involved, and their perceptions of just who is capable of horrific acts like Katie’s murder.
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Never less than well-made, Adolescence sustains a rawness that makes it a tough but compulsive watch.
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Each of this miniseries’ four episodes takes place in real time and is shot with one, continuous camera move, a gimmick that lends a sense of immediacy and intimacy to a challenging story.
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The technique [an uncut single camera shot] contributes real-time immediacy to the story being told, as well as a certain astonishment at the methods, choreography and endurance of the cast. It must have been exhausting.
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Even more than the technical gimmick, it’s in large part thanks to acting like Bojang’s that the resolutely dark, downbeat Adolescence is able to avoid feeling like a protracted episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
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All told, this is a heartbreaking look at a devastating tragedy that leaves a community and a family grappling with the heartbreak and wondering if they played a part in what happened. It’s powerful and finds Graham being a force in front of and behind the camera.
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Unfortunately, “Adolescence” ’s flashy, fragmentary approach undermines its attempts to illuminate. .... The series opts to focus more on the societal factors that make such a killing plausible than on Jamie’s specific desires and concerns, its perspective is only ever that of an outsider. And though it pays lip service to Katie’s neglected humanity, its true sympathy lies less with the victim than with the grownup bystanders trying to make sense of it all.
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