Yes, we should celebrate Adolescence – but it comes at a cost to the UK TV industry | Jane Martinson

Thu, 03 Apr 2025

This vital drama has British actors, a British writer, but Netflix funding. Here’s why that’s a huge problem

Everyone is talking about Adolescence, the television drama focused on toxic masculinity that has triggered a continuing social and political debate. But only a handful of people are talking about what the hit drama says about the real-time crisis unfolding in the British television industry – and that needs discussion too.

Adolescence is everything public service broadcasting should be: hard-hitting programming featuring the kind of people often ignored in TV drama – in this case, white working-class families in the north – discussed at the school gate and in parliament. After its British writer, Jack Thorne, met Keir Starmer in Downing Street, it was revealed that Adolescence was to be rolled out for free across all UK secondary schools.