Gaby Hinsliff

Keir Starmer praised Adolescence. But what did he learn from it?

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It's the story every parent of teenagers I know has been watching horrified through their fingers. The Netflix drama Adolescence starts with armed police breaking down a front door to arrest a 13-year-old boy for murder, in front of his bewildered parents. Though initially it seems there must have been some terrible mistake, Jamie's Instagram account soon yields clues that all the adults - police, parents and teachers alike - had initially blundered past, oblivious.

Though talk of misogynistic "manosphere" influencers such as Andrew Tate hovers over the storyline, this isn't really a story of radicalisation. What it skewers is the feeling of growing up in a world where sending nudes risks them instantly being shared round the class and everyone films playground fights on their phones, and how that intensifies dangerous feelings of shame and rejection in immature minds.