Adolescence star Stephen Graham warns parents about the dangers of what young children are seeing online.
The critically-acclaimed Netflix series follows a father named Eddie Miller (Graham), who finds out his 13-year-old son Jamie (Owen Cooper) is arrested for the brutal murder of a female classmate.
Each episode is impressively filmed in one continuous take, giving viewers an up-close look at how Jamie’s family deals with the aftermath of the crime.
The Boiling Point actor was inspired by news reports of stabbings of young girls and used the show to explore intense topics happening today such as 'incel' culture, misogyny and the online 'manosphere.'
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“I read an article about a young boy stabbing a young girl,” the 51-year old said. “And then maybe a couple of months later, on the news there was [another] young boy who'd stabbed a young girl, and if I'm really honest with you, they hurt my heart.”
Graham says the show looks at the different pressures and influences surrounding kids today that their parents might not even be aware of.
“It's just being mindful of the fact that not only we parent our children, and not only the school educates our children,” he added. “But also there's influences that we have no idea of that are having profound effects on our young culture, profound effects, positive and extremely negative. So it’s having a look at that and seeing that we’re all accountable.”
One of the key points the Peaky Blinders' actor wanted to get across in Adolescence was that these issues can touch any family - there doesn’t have to be specifically something going on at home.
“We wanted him to come from an ordinary family,” he described. “We wanted to be mindful from the very beginning that there was no way you could point the finger. Dad wasn't particularly violent in the house and didn't raise his hand to mum or the boy or his daughter. Mum wasn't an alcoholic. Jamie wasn't abused sexually or mentally or physically.”
In such a case, Graham then asked: “Who is to blame? Who is accountable?" adding that: “Maybe we're all accountable family, school, society, community, environment.”
With the internet being at children's fingertips these days, they are exposed to a lot of information and influences. While Adolescence doesn’t directly name controversial online figures like Andrew Tate, Graham and other co-writer Jack Thorne made that choice on purpose. They wanted to show that the influences shaping kids today are more 'complex' and sometimes more dangerous than any single internet personality.
“The kids aren't watching Andrew Tate,” he said. “They're watching a lot more dangerous stuff than Andrew Tate. We were trying present a portrait of complexity of this kid that had been made by all sorts of different influences and the thing about incel culture is there's a logic to it.”
The show received immense praise from its audience, achieving a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes for portraying real issues in a gritty yet entertaining light. More than just entertainment, it is also opening up the eyes of parents and teachers regarding the coded language and slang young people use.
So much so that UK police have released a guide explaining the terms featured in Adolescence to help adults better understand what kids might be covering up.