In Netflix's Adolescence, there is more than one victim

It's his son that they want, and when they enter his bedroom, you quickly realise that Adolescence isn't your average crime drama.

Jamie, who is just 13 years old, is arrested for murdering a girl from his school, a charge he repeatedly denies. And you can't help but wonder if the police have made a catastrophic error. But then, at the end of the first episode, we see it.

Captured in some chilling CCTV footage is the moment Jamie stabbed Katie to death, without hesitation, raising and lowering the blade seven times.

Her body was found in a car park with lacerations to her neck, chest, arms and thighs, just a few feet away from a playground, and a short walk from their school.

No, Adolescence is definitely not your run-of-the-mill crime drama, instead delivering a harrowing portrait of the toxic impact that online incel culture is having on young men and boys – and the devastating, sometimes fatal consequences of that for women and girls.

"There were a few incidents, there were a good few incidents why this idea came to my head," Graham told RadioTimes.com. "And it hurt my heart that young boys, they're not men, they're young boys, are killing young girls."

But while Katie is the central victim here, having had her life stolen from her, and in the most appalling of circumstances – and I include her family and friends in that too, who must now find a way to live their lives without her, and with the knowledge of how she met her brutal end – Jamie and his family are also victims, albeit in a different way.

This isn't about diminishing what happened to Katie or equating her murder with Jamie's fate, because there is every chance he will one day be a free man who can rebuild his life. There is a future there for him, if he seizes that opportunity. The same cannot be said for Katie.

But by becoming immersed in an online world which feels increasingly unknowable and out of control – a violent, hateful world that revels in and normalises the degradation of women and girls, a world that is radicalising young men and boys, in particular, to carry out acts of violence against women and girls – Jamie's childish innocence has been stolen from him, long before he enters adulthood.

That part of him, which should have been cherished and protected for as long as possible, has been firmly extinguished, and with it, a light has gone out, the loss of which is akin to a death.

We gain a deeper understanding of what exactly has been done to Jamie by the harmful content he was accessing in the third episode, seven months on from the murder he committed, while he's being housed in a secure training centre.

He's not in control of his emotions because he doesn't understand his emotions. He lives in a state of confusion and fear about every little thing he does lest it say the wrong thing about who he is and, crucially, whether that stands in opposition to the archaic and narrow parameters of manhood he's been fed on the internet and social media.

Jamie's idea of what it means to be a man, a key focus of his conversations with the clinical psychologist, has been twisted violently out of shape. He wants her to know that he's not gay. That's very important. He lies about having been intimate with a girl. He's not interested in football, recalling an uncomfortable moment involving his dad, which is clearly a source of great shame. He describes himself as "ugly".

What bleeds through, above all else, is his complete absence of self-esteem. Jamie is riddled with anxiety, so much of which stems from if he's measuring up to the singular masculine ideal, because in the dark recesses of the online world he's been frequenting, his thoughts growing more noxious by the day, there is only one way to truly be a man: an alpha who is always in control, regardless of what it takes to get there, and what it costs to stay there.

So, when Katie rejected him, and in such a public, cavalier manner, that was threatened, with his anxiety giving way to white hot rage.

It is male fragility in action, at a frighteningly young age, and women and girls are paying the price.

But so, too, are young men. Toxic masculinity not only puts women and girls at risk, it endangers men's mental and physical wellbeing also, contributing to male-on-male violence and male suicide, which is the single largest cause of death for men under the age of 50 in the UK.

To put it simply, there are no winners in a world where those attitudes are king. Katie is dead, but Jamie, too, has had something precious ripped away from him.

In a practical sense, he has lost his freedom, for the time being at least, and there is now a black mark against him, although there could be the possibility of a new identity and lifelong anonymity further down the line.

But on a deeper, more emotional level, Jamie was unwittingly lured down the rabbit hole – for he had no real grasp of the path he was edging along and where it would lead him – and he's yet to come out the other side, as evidenced by the furious outbursts he directs at the psychologist.

As the final credits roll, we don't know if he will ever be able to disentangle himself from the virus-like mindset that has taken hold.

But even if he does, Jamie will have to live with the weight of what he has done, forever changed by his violent actions, and that's a burden his family will also have to carry for the rest of their lives.

In the immediate aftermath, there is the graffiti sprayed on Eddie's van. There are unsettling exchanges and altercations in a DIY store. There are neighbours gawping, whispering; endless scrutiny, which will continue to persist.

"Everyone causes me trouble," admits Lisa.

They will be tabloid fodder for the rest of their lives.

Eddie warns against moving back to Liverpool for fear of what will happen.

But all of that, while deeply unpleasant and exposing and at times threatening, pales in comparison to the pain they feel because they, too, have lost something precious that can never be recovered – and we see the full scope of that when Eddie enters his son's bedroom in the aforementioned final scene.

As he sits on the edge of Jamie's bed, he's unable to restrain the tidal wave of emotion roiling within him. A waterfall of tears cascades down his cheeks, his despair laid bare, as he wraps his arms around himself, an attempt at self-soothing.

You can almost hear his heart physically shattering beyond repair as he sobs into Jamie's pillow, before tucking his teddy bear beneath the covers, as he would have done for his child in what now must feel like an entirely different lifetime, or someone else's life altogether.

It's rare that we see a scene like that in a TV series about the aftermath of a violent crime. We rarely hear from the families of the culprit or those closest to them, and when we do, the picture is very rarely a flattering one, and certainly not one that indicates any ounce of care or remorse. So often, an unstable, challenging or violent home life is a factor in the crime itself. But not here.

Here, we see a family who have are grieving too, for what their boy has done, and the boy they have now lost.

A bike hanging in a shed; space wallpaper; a LEGO minifigure on a bedside table. All remnants of their boy who is no more.

Read more:

• Adolescence review: Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne Netflix drama could save lives
• Is Adolescence based on a true story? Inspiration behind dark new Netflix drama
• Adolescence star Ashley Walters says harrowing script had him crying most nights
• Netflix's Adolescence: Women and girls will never be safe if we're not talking to men and boys
• Netflix reveals secrets behind Adolescence's ambitious and technical single-shot filming
• Adolescence writer warns funding crisis could wipe out such shows – as drama's Netflix ratings confirmed

Adolescence is available to stream now on Netflix. Sign up for Netflix from £5.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.

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