Adolescence soared to the top of Netflix charts with 24.3 million viewers, and the staggering figures have broken records on British TV as well.
Released on March 13, the four-part series Adolescence stars Stephen Graham as Eddie Miller, a father whose family is shattered after his 13-year-old son Jamie (Owen Cooper) is accused of murder.
Shot in one take, the show also stars Ashley Walters as DI Luke Bascombe, Christine Tremarco as Manda Miller and Erin Doherty as Briony Ariston.
Both critics and fans have rushed to praise the series – which currently holds a 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
‘This is not an easy watch… But in what Adolescence has to say, and in how eloquently and audaciously it says it, it’s also among the very best things — and an early contender for the best thing — you will see on the small screen this year,’ Rolling Stone wrote in its review.
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‘Adolescence isn’t just an entertaining series (though it is, in some warped way); it’s one of the most important series I’ve seen in a long time,’ Collider shared.
‘It is a drama so quietly devastating that I won’t forget it for a very long time,’ The Daily Telegraph added.
Meanwhile, viewers said it was ‘phenomenal’ and left them ‘bawling’.
After sparking global conversation and becoming the most-watched show on Netflix, it’s now been revealed just how popular it’s been in the UK – to history-making results.
Ratings body BARB released figures showing that 6.45 million people across the UK watched the first episode in the first 7 days, easily topping the charts.
By doing so, it became the biggest streaming show in the UK in a single week, beating Netflix’s Fool Me Once in 2024 which sat at a pretty 6.3 million viewers.
What’s more, episode two closely followed at its heels with 5.98 million viewers – with both episodes beating two major TV shows, The Apprentice and Death in Paradise, which secured 5.79 million and 5.75 million viewers respectively.
Previously speaking to Metro, Stephen explained the idea for Adolescence – which he co-wrote with Jack Thorne – came after he heard about ‘another incident of a young boy stabbing a young girl’.
‘I’m going to call them young boys, because they were young boys, and they are young boys. And it just hurt my heart, basically,’ he said.
‘I just wondered, what kind of a society and what kind of a world are we living in where this kind of thing has happened, not once, not twice, three, four, five times? It just really made me curious.’
He recalling feeling that ‘this was something that we could look at as a society’, adding that his objective ‘was never to point the finger in any way, shape or form, but just to raise the question of why is this happening, and who is to blame? What is to blame? Family, school, society, influences… maybe we’re all kind of accountable.’
He continued: ‘What’s that beautiful saying it takes a village to raise a child? I think maybe that’s something we should look at as a collective. So, it’s not necessarily pointing a finger at one specific individual. It’s the whole thing itself. What would drive a young boy to do something like this?’
Adolescence is streaming on Netflix.
This article was first published on March 18, 2025.
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