This series is the type of quality television that stays with you and reminds you that television can be gripping, confronting and unmissable.

Spoiler Alert!

This series begins with the young boy at the centre of this program being charged with murder. The manner in which he is treated by the authorities, how he responds to being detained and to those who seek to understand why he appeared to have savagely murdered a female student is the context of the series.

While the perception of what it means to be a man and how to interact with girls and women is presented as being heavily influenced by messages of toxic masculinity, the latter parts of the show and especially the devastating final scene shift the attention to parenting styles and parents’ revolt against their own strict upbringing.

Also confronting are the school scenes and seemingly out of control, rude and disrespectful behaviour. What was presented was nothing like the secondary school classes I taught in the 1980s. Yet, a current secondary school teacher assures me that Adolescence is a remarkably accurate portrayal of adolescents today.

One or more of the above themes is likely to resonate with each of us. What will determine which it is likely to be will most probably relate to our parents’ and own  experiences as adolescents, the views of our role models and peers, our romantic or sexual interactions in school and our attitudes to law enforcement.

In an opinion piece in the March 29~30 Australian, an opinion piece writer offers a vastly different view of the series, reflecting,, in my view, a misinterpretation and a perception of issues not necessarily addressed in Adolescence.  

Under the title, Skewed Vision of British Boys The Australian newspaper previewed Brendan O’Neill’s article as being about ‘the hit Netflix drama taking an unfair swipe at the white working class’.

The actual title of Brendan O’Neill piece – Elite’s Sneering Attack on UK’s White Working Class –makes his focus  even clearer. Conceding that Adolescence may be ‘good TV’ O’Neill argues that ‘as a reflection of Britain and its boys it’s nonsense.’ Clearly convinced of this view he slides in Trump like unfounded generalisations. For instance, he states that ‘it is unheard of for a working-class boy from a stable family to commit a horrific knife crime because he saw stupid stuff on the internet.’

Apart from the above ludicrous assertion about working-class boys, he appears to conveniently overlook the father’s quick temper, apparently inherited by the boy, which the parents felt may have accounted for their son’s crime. In addition, the show by no means even suggests that the internet was solely to blame.

While seeking to exonerate working class boys, O’Neil, somewhat predictably for a columnist in a conservative newspaper, steers attention to the racial, ethnic and  religious minorities that according to crime statistics he suggests should instead be the focus of concerns over violence in Britain.

Finally, while it is proposed that the program be shown in schools O’Neil argues that ‘a drama designed to raise awareness about boys going to dark places on the internet could end up encouraging more to do so.’

Ultimately, there’s only one way to find out what you will take away from this 4 hours of great television.