Netflix’s Newest Crime Show Is The Most Important Thing You’ll Watch In 2025
We’ve all undoubtedly seen a movie or TV show about a young girl being murdered. But what about one that completely revolves around a young boy being the murderer?
Netflix’s newest crime drama, Adolescence, examines just that. The show begins with the police raiding the Miller household in the middle of the night to arrest 13-year-old Jamie Miller, who we quickly learn is the prime suspect for the murder of his female classmate. But unlike most crime dramas, the following four episodes aren’t about the murder, the trial, or even the mystery surrounding Jamie’s innocence. Instead, the show focuses on Jamie’s headspace and the current cultural climate that could turn a kid into a cold-blooded murderer.
But is he really cold-blooded?
Warning: Mild spoilers ahead.
Adolescence isn’t like You or Ryan Murphy’s limited series chronicling the lives of serial killers, oftentimes in a voyeuristic way. It isn’t a true story, either, but instead inspired by an influx of recent true crime cases surrounding boys and young men enacting violence on (and sometimes killing) their female peers. Here, we don’t get to see what exactly causes Jamie to do what he does, but we do get some insight through his emotionally charged conversations with the police, a child psychologist, and his family throughout four episodes (each shot all in one take, allowing viewers to see the full interactions in real-time). Pivotally, each conversation touches on Jamie’s online footprint.
In a world increasingly becoming reliant on technology, what does that mean for this next generation of kids? For one, it opens up a whole new avenue for bullying, whether that means leaving coded comments on instagram photos for clout or circulating inappropriate photos of classmates without their consent. But it also gives young people unfettered access to online discourse created by people who have profits, not others’ best interests, in mind.
For content targeting boys, that usually means preying on their insecurities and giving them the perfect scapegoat: girls.
Adolescence does something many crime shows neglect or fail to do: it humanizes its culprit without flinching away from who he is or what he has done. He is a child who still sleeps with a teddy bear and cries for his parents when he’s scared; he is a murderer who stabbed his classmate seven times. This is a portrait of a teenage boy who is scared and angry, who has been fed the narrative that he is ugly and unmasculine and unworthy, and yet still entitled to female attention. It shows how even “normal” children, with textbook nuclear families and a good support system of friends, can easily become the target of online radicalization by popular content creators who have specific views about masculinity and misogyny.
But maybe most importantly of all, it shows that while girls and women usually pay the highest price, this online culture shift hurts everyone—even (and maybe especially) the young boys and men who believe it exists to help them. Maybe these boys aren’t monsters, but that doesn’t mean the desensitization of violence, the devaluation of themselves, and the dehumanization of women can’t lead them to do monstrous things. And unfortunately, as the show suggests, that’s something we might all have to reckon with, perhaps sooner rather than later.
Adolescence is streaming on Netflix now.