Writer Phoebe Adebayo expresses how she feels about recent four-part series Adolescence. On how convinced she was that lead character Stephen Graham’s son did not kill Katie and how convincing he was throughout the series
You might have heard of the new four-part Netflix series, Adolescence, about a boy accused of killing a girl. It seems everyone has seen it – and that’s probably a good thing.
The series – starring Stephen Graham as the boy’s worried dad, Ashley Walters as the investigating police detective, Christine Tremarco as his mum, and main character Owen Cooper – was shot in four single segments.
The series Adolescence is astonishing! It’s the best psychological drama I’ve ever watched. I realised throughout the series that it wasn’t about my plot twists. I mean it was such a grabber, it was attention seeking and it really had everyone’s attention. It had me wondering, guessing, and puzzling pieces throughout the limited series. I was so sure HE DIDN’T KILL HER.
The series is not only based on a murder, but it also teaches you a lot about parenting and how your parenting and the environment you put your children in is so important.
I also feel like it’s a series that should be shown in schools because it’s based on the fact that our younger children/siblings are not being monitored enough. This then has consequences on their lives forever that they don’t consider as serious, in this case it led to a killing of a young girl.
At first, I most definitely believed that Jamie had not killed the girl because of the sorrow, hurt and upset in his eyes, which he persistently showed throughout the series alongside the constant feeling that he hadn’t done anything wrong. He expressed this to the police almost a million times.
He was so convincing. I didn’t know what to believe – until his guilt was revealed through CCTV footage showing him stabbing Katie in the first shot, and then in the last shot he eventually confesses to the crime by changing his plea to guilty.
One main reason why I thought he didn’t kill her is because Jamie came from a household which I thought looked pretty loving and stable. He lived with both his parents and his older sister who was always praised for her good grades. They all had a close relationship with each other, no-one was neglected, so never would I have thought he had killed her. He seemed too young to even do something like that. I was on his side from the beginning. Clearly I was wrong to be!
His mother and father couldn’t believe it, alongside me. As he breaks down crying in the first shot exclaiming “what have you done”
One thing I would say is that I do feel like we were left on a bit of a cliff hanger only because the series doesn’t detail the trial or the sentencing of Jamie’s punishment but we are forced to assume that his guilty plea implies a life sentence in prison.
That was the first time in a long time that I’ve watched something that had me this hooked since How to get away with murder.
