Adolescence: Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer backs campaign to show Netflix series in schools

Adolescence, starring and co-written by actor Stephen Graham, has taken the world by storm, quickly rising to the top of Netflix’s charts after almost universal acclaim. The show follows 13-year-old Jamie Miller who is accused of killing a female schoolmate.

Graham, and his co-writer Jack Thorne, have advocated for the series, which focuses on themes of young male anger, incel culture, masculinity, and misogyny, to reach as many teenagers as possible. Thorne previously said: "I want it to be shown in schools, I want it to be shown in Parliament.

“It's crucial because this is only going to get worse. It's something that people need to be talking about, hopefully that's what drama can do.”

The Prime Minister has now backed these calls, after Knowsley MP Anneliese Midgley raised the point during Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday (March 19). Midgley told the chamber that Adolescence "highlights online male radicalisation and violence against girls", urging the PM to back the campaign for the series to be shown in schools "to counter toxic misogyny early" and "give young men the role models they deserve".

Starmer responded: "At home we are watching Adolescence. I've got a 16-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl, and it's a very good drama to watch.

"This violence carried out by young men, influenced by what they see online, is a real problem. It's abhorrent, and we have to tackle it."

Thorne opened up to Newsnight on Wednesday evening about creating the show, saying: “I thought I could read this incel stuff and go ‘this is a foreign problem, this is something that doesn’t affect me’. I read it, I watched it, I consumed as much as I possibly could and I realised that there was something really attractive in it.

“I realised that if I was a teenage kid and I had heard that 80% of women are attracted to 20% of men so it’s your responsibility to manipulate the situation in order to live a normal life, so that you can feel attractive, so that you can be the person you want to be - I would have gone with that, I would have been very taken by it, I would have listened to the solutions they were proposing.”

Thorne added that controversial influencer Andrew Tate was not the only personality who was advocating these views, saying: “These ideas are everywhere and we need to stop those ideas getting into kids’ heads.”

Speaking about Starmer revealing that he was watching the show with his children, Thorne said: “That’s amazing, and it’s important. I hope that means we can use this moment to provoke this government to consider quite serious change.”