A teenager who is arrested at dawn, while still in his bed, by a police team armed to the teeth as if they were dealing with the most monstrous of serial killers. Thus begins Adolescence, a British miniseries in 4 parts, in first place on Netflix, which in Italy has also surpassed Il Gattopardo with Kim Rossi Stuart, Benedetta Porcaroli and Deva Cassel and has accumulated in general over 24.3 million views.
For the Guardian, "the closest thing to television perfection in decades" but what is striking is above all the stylistic choice: each episode is made in a single shot, a long sequence shot without even a ghost cut , with the actors acting continuously for an hour - and at every mistake they start over again - while around them the production moves with a studied choreography. A technique that increases the sense of oppression and anguish in the viewer, even the theme is more than enough.
At the heart of the series is the drama of a family and a community: 13-year-old Jamie Miller, an ordinary boy who grew up in an ordinary family, is accused of killing a schoolmate, Katie. For his sister Lisa (Amelie Pease) and parents Eddie (Stephen Graham, author of the series with Jack Thorne and producer with Brad Pitt) and Amanda (Christine Tremarco), an ordeal begins until the verdict.
During the investigation, a completely unknown world opens up to adults : we discover a universe made of messages on Instagram, smileys and comments that are a way for the male chauvinist culture to communicate about what they have the right to expect and demand from girls. At the center is the "Incel subculture" with that 80/20 theory, according to which 80% of women are attracted to only 20% of handsome and gifted men while the others remain involuntary celibacy . A subculture, in fact, that however proliferates online fueling violence and misogyny towards women, depicted in a merciless way: in a broader sense we speak of "manosphere", sites, blogs and forums that cultivate a certain idea of masculinity and opposition to feminism understood in a completely distorted way , that is, as a movement that generates hatred towards men.
Those who accept these ideas, in the jargon of the “manosphere”, take the “red pill”: as in the movie Matrix, they accept seeing the “truth”, theirs.
Adolescence surprises in its plot, it chooses never to justify Jamie with dark family secrets, violent experiences or problematic contexts. Jamie does not suffer from an illness but is the child of that incel and misogynistic culture . And perhaps the universal strength of Adolescence is right there: what are we doing to prevent boys from falling into the plague of violence and feminicide?