Deeply moral and cautionary portrait of online radicalization — essential viewing for Christian parents despite difficult content.
Adolescence is a four-episode Netflix miniseries about 13-year-old Jamie Miller — arrested for the murder of his female classmate — and the world that formed him. Each episode is shot in a single continuous take. Co-created by Stephen Graham (who also plays Jamie's father) and Jack Thorne, it explores online manosphere content, social media radicalization, and the failure of adults to understand the digital environments their children inhabit. It is technically accomplished and morally serious. It is also a product of deliberate creative choices that Christians should understand before watching.
Stephen Graham has said the show grew from reading news reports of young boys stabbing young girls in the UK — including a 2021 incident in Liverpool involving Ava White (killed by a 14-year-old boy), a 2023 stabbing in south London near a bus stop (Hassan Sentamu, a Black teenager, jailed for life for murdering a 15-year-old), and the 2023 murder of Brianna Ghey. The show was announced in March 2024, four months before the Southport stabbings. It was not based on Southport. But the Southport case — in which Axel Rudakubana, born in Cardiff to Rwandan asylum-seeking parents, murdered three young girls (aged 6, 7, and 9) at a Taylor Swift-themed children's dance class in July 2024 — became inextricably linked to the show in public debate. Rudakubana's own father testified to a public inquiry that difficulties assimilating into British society as a migrant family may have affected his son. Prevent, the UK's counter-extremism programme, had been alerted to Rudakubana multiple times but failed to act, with one worker reportedly warning against "racially profiling a black boy with a knife." The creators chose to make Jamie white. Co-creator Jack Thorne defended this, saying "it is absurd to say that knife crime is only committed by Black boys." This is technically accurate — UK knife crime is not exclusively committed by any one group, and cases involving white perpetrators exist. But the choice erases something real. UK government data shows that in London in 2017, 53% of knife possession suspects were Black despite Black Londoners comprising around 12% of the population — a significant disproportion the show's framing sets aside. And when the real-world knife crimes inspiring the show included the Croydon bus stop murder (Black perpetrator) and Southport (child of Rwandan migrants, with documented integration failure), choosing a white working-class British boy as the protagonist is a specific editorial decision, not a neutral one. Christians interested in truth should hold both things: knife crime involving white perpetrators is real, and the show's framing suppresses a statistically significant pattern in the cases that inspired it. The show's diagnosis — that the problem is online manosphere content radicalizing boys — is real but partial. The Southport killer also had an Al-Qaeda training manual, ricin precursors, and a father whose own testimony pointed to failed immigrant integration. The show's frame asks "what is the internet doing to British boys?" A fuller frame would also ask what mass immigration without integration infrastructure does to children raised between two worlds.
The manosphere radicalization the show depicts is real and dangerous. Andrew Tate and similar figures do reach teenage boys — including white British boys — with genuinely harmful content about women, masculinity, and violence. The show's third episode, a sustained psychologist-Jamie session, is one of the best single episodes of television in recent years. The depiction of a father who loves his son and cannot reach him is genuinely moving. These elements are valuable. Proverbs 22:6 instructs parents to train children in the way they should go. You cannot do that if you do not understand what other influences are shaping them. Adolescence makes visible the online radicalization pipeline in ways that are genuinely useful for Christian parents to understand.
The show contains strong profanity throughout. Episode 3 contains disturbing psychological content. Violence is not graphic but its consequences are depicted with full weight. No sexual content. The show is rated TV-MA. It scores Mixed (55/100) rather than higher because its partial framing — blaming manosphere content while omitting the immigration integration dimension present in the real cases it drew from — is an editorial choice that reflects the show's secular liberal worldview. Mature Christians can watch it critically, extract genuine insight about online radicalization, and note what the frame excludes. It is not appropriate for the teenagers it depicts.
GodlyScore evaluates every show across nine signal categories grounded in Scripture: profanity (Ephesians 4:29), sexual content (1 Corinthians 6:18-20), violence (Psalm 11:5), LGBT normalization (Romans 1:24-27), spiritual darkness (Ephesians 5:11), glorification of sin (Romans 1:32), deception mechanics (Proverbs 12:22), virtue strength (Philippians 4:8), and redemption arc. The score reflects not just whether content is present but how it's framed — depicted critically, neutrally, or as aspirational. Adolescence scores see full guide.
See our Christian TV Reviews hub for comparisons. For episode-level content breakdowns, Plugged In and Common Sense Media complement GodlyScore's biblical framework. Age recommendation: older teenagers and adults.