My social media timeline has been filling up with comments about the powerful Netflix drama series Adolescence, the study of a 13 year old boy who is arrested for the murder of a school classmate. Co-written and starring Stephen Graham, arguably Britain’s finest actor of the moment, I feel I am under some kind of obligation to watch it. It appears to be a crucially important piece of work, potentially transformational, rather like, though in an entirely different way, the way in which ITV’s Mr Bates v The Post Office finally exposed the post office scandal. So, it’s next in my watchlist. What, then, are my thoughts at the moment, not having seen it?
I left school some 51 years ago, so you might think I am not exactly in the best position to know what life is like for the average teenager. There was obviously no internet back in the 1970s and so no mobile phones. My mum and me didn’t even have a house phone until I was in my twenties. There were bullies back in those days and some did carry knives, albeit pen knives and not machetes. Was the world a kinder and gentler place? Personally, I don’t think it was. We still had very bad people, like burglars, paedophiles; even killers, but the only ways you found out about them was via the newspapers and when someone told you about them. I don’t remember 13 year old children stabbing other 13 year olds to death at our school and I only occasionally hear about it today.
On the face of it, I might say that I would not want to be young again for all the tea in China, but that would not be true. Perhaps my own children, now grown up, were brought up well enough so they didn’t carry knives around and go around in gangs. They certainly used the internet a great deal, but then so do I. If used properly, it is surely A Good Thing?
Adolescence is not necessarily a true story in itself, but the story, from what I have read, is certainly one that has happened more widely. While many people have been shocked by the programme, they cannot surely have been completely surprised?
I’ll watch the programme and perhaps then give a considered view. If it’s as powerful as people say it is, then should it, all four hours of it, been shown at schools? And then why should it be shown? If it is shown in all schools, by government decree perhaps, then what? If middle aged and older folk have been shaken by what they’ve seen, then how might young, innocent children react? Might it not be traumatic for them, especially? I don’t know. I am not an expert. But before we go down the road of compulsion – and I am not in principle opposed to so doing – then should we not take individual circumstances into account? Think about it. Children are not mature in the emotional sense. A tough watch for a middle aged bloke might be even worse from someone who has barely emerged from puberty.
I always come back to the fact that not all of us are the same. When framing a social media comment, it is worth remembering that perhaps not every school has major issues with knife crime and mobile phone use. What happens at your child’s school doesn’t mean it is happening everywhere.
My social media pages are very much an echo chamber these days. I have a huge number of people on ‘unfollow’ on the major platform and I automatically block hate speech on other platforms. But I am not unaware of the fact that the concerns of many people about the implications of Adolescence are not shared by everyone. Indeed, I am aware that there has been a great deal of what I can only call hate speech in relation to those who have concerns, referring to them, inevitably, as woke and snowflakes. Despite not having seen the programme, I am instinctively in support of those who fear the way in which society is heading. And maybe things are universally as bad as some folk claim, in which case I am woefully out of touch and should mind my back next time I walk past a school.
What is overwhelmingly a good thing about Adolescence is that people are talking about a big issue. I know it feels cosy and safer to wear blinkers and pretend we live in the kind of world we’d like to, you know, the one where no one needed to lock their front doors, where neighbours always looked after the people who lived next door, where there was no crime and we all lived happily ever. In other words, a time that never happened.
I’ll try and pen a few words when I’ve actually watched the show, hopefully with a degree of objectivity and honesty because not everyone is doing that, as you can see here. I have an idea which side I will come down on, but let’s take it on face value. I am looking forward to it – and I’m not. But I will watch because I have to.
