Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar in for a vacationing Alison Stewart. We are very happy that she's getting to go on vacation. Hey, thanks for spending part of your day with us. I'm grateful you are here.

On today's show, we'll continue our conversation about [unintelligible 00:00:22] Women in Music Production with [unintelligible 00:00:24]. We'll talk about Spring Boks with All Of It producer Jordan Lauf. We want to know what you are reading. Plus we'll send you into the weekend with some ideas of what to do from both us here at All Of It and your fellow listeners. Get ready to call in and tell us your weekend plans. That's the plan for today.

Let's get this started with the new Netflix series Adolescence.

[music]

Last week, Netflix dropped a four-part drama series from the UK with very little fanfare. Within 4 days, it got over 24 million streams, putting it on track to break the streamer's record. It's called Adolescence. It follows the arrest of a 13-year-old boy for the murder of a classmate. Each episode is shot in one take, building attention more often experienced in theater. The show examines the crime from several perspectives, including the police investigators, the psychologists, and the kids at his school. It also explores the online radicalization of young boys and the manosphere, the justice system, and how all of this affects both schools and families.

It was created by and stars Stephen Graham, the award-winning actor American audiences might know from Matilda, Peaky Blinders, and Boardwalk Empire. It also stars Ashley Walters, known for his role as Dushane in Top Boy. Slate calls it the Best Show of the Year, while Forbes describes it as a Technical Masterpiece. Vulture critic Nick Quah, who we normally have on to talk podcasts, recently wrote a piece about the show and why it has been such a runaway hit. It's titled Adolescence Doesn't Have the Answer. He's here to unpack why it's getting so much buzz. Nick, welcome back to All Of It.

Nick Quah: Good afternoon. Thanks for having me.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely. It's great to have you here. Listeners, we would love to hear from you too. Have you watched Adolescence? What are your thoughts about how they handled the discussion about the incel and red pill movement? Tell us your first impressions of the show. Just remember, no spoilers. Call or text us at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. If you're a parent, especially to young boys, are you worried about the kind of people they are following online? How do you monitor what comes across their feed? Call or text us. We're at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692.

Nick, I want to know, how did you first hear about the show Adolescence?

Nick Quah: It was pure word of mouth. I first heard about it through a text. A couple of friends of mine were watching it and I saw some chatter online. Like you said, it was one of those things where Netflix just dropped the whole thing over the weekend, largely without fanfare. Stephen Graham, you can find him on another show on Disney+ right now called A Thousand Blows. When I think about Stephen Graham, right now, I'm thinking about that show. I did not know he made this with Jack Thorne, directed by Philip Barantini. Almost out of nowhere, by Monday, I log in to work on Slack and everybody's talking about it. It does feel like one of those grassroots, both the power of the Netflix algorithm, but also, the power of a really buzzy show that's tackling a very specific thing that's on everybody's minds.

Kousha Navidar: I guess the most obvious question here is what is it about this show that's drawing in so many people that's creating all that buzz?

Nick Quah: There's a couple of layers to it. The very immediate buzzy layer is the modernity angle of it. It's ultimately about a show that tries to grapple with, I suppose, the dangers of boyhood and real dangers of violence within boyhood in an age of toxic podcasts, incel culture, online radicalization more broadly, and alienation more broadly. There's this sort of modern element that we're all still grappling with well after the pandemic and well after the effects of the 2024 presidential election. We're still in an age of very specific kind of masculinity.

It also, I think, brings you back to very core eternal anxiety, which, as a parent, is the fate of the sons that you raise. Their behavior, their future, their relationships with other people, that's always out of your control forever and more, but it feels expressly out of control and subject to forces that you are really afraid of right now with the Internet, and right now in an age where it just feels like we're more disconnected from each other than ever.

Kousha Navidar: It's interesting that you bring up the idea that this topic, specifically the challenges that young boys, young men are falling into that is persistent, you're saying. It has existed well after the pandemic, well after previous presidential elections. In terms of that coverage in stories we see on streamers, in the media, less about the news but more just the stories that we consume, do you feel like this is kind of new territory that the show is breaking through and covering, or do you feel like it's been covered before, the show's doing it differently? What do you make of that?

Nick Quah: This particular modern feel of it, the coming of age within the age of the Internet in its very specific form right now, which is full of darkness and full of unknowability in an age of, we don't quite know when young kids log on to YouTube, what exactly they're watching. That's the specific unknowability of the way we live online right now. It feels like we're crossing the threshold, and it feels like this show is a very good first wave of really grappling with that question.

The larger question of, "What's up with the boys? What's up with men?" It's been an issue that's been reflected and grappled with in pop culture for as long as there is. The archetype of the bully, the archetype of the violent young man. You can think about it all the way back to Taxi Driver, Robert De Niro is an alienated young man who eventually gets into his head that he should assassinate a political figure. There's a real relationship that you can draw across history between these two archetypes.

Right now, this feeling of dislocation because of the Internet, this is new. That's kind of what Adolescence, I feel, is pretty good at [unintelligible 00:06:57] and grappling with, and feels pretty novel and fresh for doing so.

Kousha Navidar: Is that what motivated you to write about it?

Nick Quah: What motivated me was the phenomena of it.

Kousha Navidar: The Slack channel that blew up on Monday morning.

Nick Quah: That's it. You know, I. Look, this is a job. I know what my job is. I have been thinking a lot about the prospect of what does it mean to raise a boy. My partner and I are in the very early stages of our journey towards parenthood. One of the things that I'm reflecting on is that if we do end up having a boy, I do not feel particularly equipped or ready for the journey, especially now more so than ever and as things change so quickly.

Kousha Navidar: It's a great point that you bring up about parenthood. I'm sure that there are many parents listening right now who have probably heard about the show, tried to watch it. I'm seeing some texts come in. I'm seeing some calls come in. Listeners, we're talking about a new four-part drama series on Netflix that follows the investigation that occurs after a 13-year-old boy murders his classmate. That series is called Adolescence. We're having a watch party right now with Vulture critic Nick Quah. We're taking your calls.

Listeners, we'd love to hear from you. Have you watched Adolescence? What are your thoughts about how they handled the discussion about the incel and red pill movement? Tell us your first impressions of the show. If you're a parent, especially to young boys, what's your take on it? Are you worried about the kind of people that your kids might be following online? Give us a call, send us a text. We're at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692.

Got a good text here. It says, "As A mother of 12-year-olds, I'm too scared to watch it," with a crying emoji there. We've also got a couple of callers on the line. Let's go to Maggie in Irvington, New York. Hey, Maggie, welcome to the show.

Maggie: Hi. Thank you. Well, I think Adolescence is by far the best television I've seen in years. There are many reasons why. First of all, the complexity of emotions is so well portrayed by every actor in the program. I can't get over it. I'm going to watch it again. I'm a psychologist. The third episode is breathtaking. the feelings for the boy. I forget his name. James? No, I can't remember.

Nick Quah: Jamie.

Maggie: Yes. His acting was also breathtaking. The father who created the show, the emotions of every single actor. There are few actors in it and you really get a sense of what they're going through in a very deep way. How they created that, I don't know. It's interesting. I've told a few friends about it, they felt the same way I did, but I haven't told some friends about it.

Kousha Navidar: Maggie, thank you so much for that call. We really appreciate it, especially the fact that you're a psychologist and saying that you found these performances so moving. I think this is a great moment, Nick, to bring up some of the performances and hear your take on it. The show stars actor Stephen Graham, who worked with Philip on Boiling Point and helped write the series alongside Ashley Walters as a detective and Erin Doherty as a child psychologist. I want to get to the actor who plays Jamie as well later. Among those that I just mentioned, tell us what stood out to you about those performances?

Nick Quah: They were all uniformly excellent. There is sort of a social realism to the project that each individual actor really roots into what feels like very much of a lived experience. These feel like actual human beings who go in and out in between moments of day-to-day life and these big traumatic things that's happening on them, and it continues to impact them on a day-to-day basis. One thing that we should talk about, and I don't think we talked about yet, is the formal conceit of the show.

Kousha Navidar: Yes.

Nick Quah: Each episode is shot in one take. My understanding is that they did shoot it in one take. Maybe they cheated here and there, I'm not quite sure yet.

Kousha Navidar: I was trying to figure that out while I was watching this and I could not see any other splicing as a part of it. It's very impressive.

Nick Quah: There is a chase sequence in the second episode where it feels like the camera moves out through the window with the characters, it was quite fascinating. There's a purpose to the "oner," which is what a one-shot take is called. A colleague of mine, Fran wrote a really good piece about it over at Vulture. Please read it. With the oner, what you're simulating here is the experience of the ins and outs of how you would actually process an experience like this.

In the first episode, you follow Jamie Miller, the 13-year-old boy, as he's processed by the system. When you're stuck in the claustrophobia of that experience, you go in and out of a certain humanity in that process. In that third episode, which the caller talked about, it is, I believe, the major set piece. It's the make-or-break moment for the series where Jamie Miller, played by a young Owen Cooper, I believe this is his first project, I'm not terribly sure. He is quite a revelation in this show. He's visited by a therapist played by Erin Doherty, and it plays out like an extended theater sequence because, for the most part, you're with these two characters and the therapist is there to essentially evaluate Jamie for his upcoming trial.

There is multiple layers of balance here. Owen Cooper plays Jamie Miller as this 13-year-old boy who's gravitating, oscillating between aggression and being a 13-year-old kid. He is also now several months by that point into being processed into the juvenile system. He is confused. He's developmentally, I guess, worsened by his experience there. He's exhibiting these behaviors as a 13-year-old, of all these toxic masculine traits that we come to fear from the archetype of boys and young men who get radicalized by incel culture and red pill culture in the manosphere; aggression, sexual aggression.

Again, he's a 13-year-old boy expressing these things to a much older adult female. There's this dynamic within adolescent male sexuality that the show really stirs into and that Owen Cooper's performance really lands. It's a remarkable episode. There are aspects of it that's worth critiquing, but from a sheer performance standpoint--

Kousha Navidar: He really nailed it.

Nick Quah: Really nailed it. There's nothing quite like that episode really.

Kousha Navidar: Wow. Well, listeners, we're talking with Nicholas Quah, the Vulture critic, about the new Netflix series Adolescence. It's a four-part drama series. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back we're going to do a few things. First, we're going to hear some clips from the show. We're also going to take more of your calls. If you have seen Adolescence or if you are a parent of a young boy and you have thoughts about the whole incel red pill movement, we're here to take your calls and your texts. Give us a call at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

[music]

Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar. We are talking about Adolescence. It's the four-part drama series which released Thursday, March 13th on Netflix. It follows the investigation that occurs after a 13-year-old boy murders his classmate. We're having a watch party with Vulture critic Nick Quah. We're also taking your calls. Listeners., give us a call if you have first impressions, if you've watched the series and you have thoughts what you thought about it. We're at 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC.

Nick, I'm going to go through some texts that we got during the break. Here's one that says, "I finished it last night and was shaking as I felt the parents' pain in my core. I loved the show and thought it was brilliantly done, acted and how the narrative was more about the why behind it rather than just another whodunit." That's from Juliana.

Nick, you were mentioning that, how this is a show that talks about archetypes that we've talked about for a long time but in a new, modern way. Here's another text. "As a parent, I know that I can only control what is in my grasp. I can monitor what my children watch and who they follow. However, once they walk out the door, I can no longer control who they talk to and what they discuss with their peers. If they have parents that have been sucked into the manosphere, I can't stop them from sharing those ideas with my children. What's a parent to do?" It's a big question.

I think that last question, "What's a parent to do?" Is something that the show tries to look at through the experiences of those parents. I'd love to play a clip from the show, Nick, and get your take on it. The series opens with a casual conversation between detectives Luke Bascombe, who's played by Ashley Walters, and Misha Frank, who's played by Faye Marsay. They're about to raid a North England home. The police tell the entire family, the mom, the dad, the sister, to get on the ground while 13-year-old Jamie wets himself. He's presumably afraid and shocked by the police entering his home in such a manner. Let's listen to a clip. This is Jamie in the police van on his way to the police station after the raid.

Jamie: I haven't done anything. I haven't. I can't [unintelligible 00:16:58]

Luke Bascombe: Hey, hey, hey. We'll get into that conversation when we get to the station, okay? This is not the place to be speaking about anything like that. All right? Save all of this for when we get there. Don't say another word. I'm going to suggest something. When asked, you ask for a solicitor, okay? You can speak to your parents about it when you get to the station. It won't make you seem more guilty. Just for your best interests, all right? Jamie, this is Derek. Derek will be your appropriate adult for the purpose of this arrest. All right?

Derek: Hi, Jamie, I'm from Doncaster Social Services. All right?

Luke Bascombe: Once you get there, the custody sergeant is going to ask you whether you want to keep Derek on, or whether you want someone else, or you can even have one of your parents. It'll just be for your searches, bloods, anytime you're talking to your solicitor, that sort of thing. Okay? It won't prejudice your case. Whatever you decide, mate. All right?

Kousha Navidar: It's quite intense. Nick, what do the first 10 minutes of the series reveal about the detectives and the crime that's been committed?

Nick Quah: It reveals-- No spoilers, right? [laughs]

Kousha Navidar: Yes, no spoilers.

Nick Quah: I don't know. First of all, I don't think this is a show that functions on spoilers. I'll just say it because I think knowing this is actually really important going to the show and how to process the show. By the end of the first episode, it's unambiguous, like the kid did it. That's why the show is less a whodunit and it's not even a why-done-it situation. In that opening sequence in that first episode, it sets up the genre trick of the show. You go into it, you've seen many, many true crime e-crime drama shows before, countless of them. We have grown up in a TV culture that has so many of these tropes.

You go in expecting something about maybe a twist, maybe something about this kid was wrongfully accused. That's a larger sort of system at play. By the end of the first episode, no, there is security footage, and now what the show really revealed its hand to be, which is just asking the larger questions, then prompting this conversation about how we feel about it and how these characters feel about it, how these representations of presumably real experiences feel about it. In that opening episode, it establishes the thesis that this is a visceral watch and you're going to be in for quite a ride.

Kousha Navidar: How about on the detective side? What do you think those first few minutes-- We hear in this clip, we have the detective flipping, trying to play-- I don't know if it's him playing good cop or being very humane with this child right now. What's your take on it?

Nick Quah: Well, it's established the fact that this is a juvenile case, that he is 13 years old and a 13-year-old who is accused and then later proven to have murdered a classmate. There is a real delicate line that the justice system and that specific scene that the detective has to walk. This is still a kid. He wet himself, he is crying, he's afraid. We come to also learn that he did this. The delicate sensitivity of that situation pulls the show into a very specific place when we think about perpetrators of violence and perpetrators of murder. That's what I believe the first 10 to 20 minutes--

Then, all through the processing that Jamie experiences in the police station, it always reminds me that as a kid, he goes through the system, and he's eventually given police supply cornflakes to eat. When his father, played by Steven Graham, comes in, he's still young enough for his dad to be like, "Eat your cornies. You need to keep up your strength." It consistently reminds you that this is still a kid ultimately, but a kid who's done the gravest, worst possible thing possible.

Kousha Navidar: Let's go to K from the Bronx. Kay, sounds like you just started watching the series. What's your take?

Kay: I just actually started watching it this morning. 3:00 in the morning. I couldn't sleep/ I'm scrolling and I'm like, "Oh, yes, I keep hearing this movie." I started watching it. My first impressions was, I don't know if you guys remember this thing back in the days called Scared Straight where kids, I guess, go to the prisons and they realize, "Oh my gosh, I never want to get arrested, I never want to go to jail." Well, that's the type of impression I was getting. I only watched it for the first half an hour, hour.

They bang your door down, he takes him out, the kid is just terrified. I'm thinking, "This is a great show for every adolescent to watch." Just for that sheer understanding of what you go through. That'll scare any kid to be like, "I never want to get arrested, I never want to do anything bad."

Kousha Navidar: It felt really lifelike to you then, right? Yes. Kay, thanks so much for that call. We really appreciate it. Happy watching. Happy? I don't know if that's the right word, but hope you keep watching it, finding something valuable out of it. Let's go to Carol in Lito Beach, New York. Hey, Carol, welcome to the show.

Carol: Hi, thanks for having me on, and thanks for having the show again. I listened to the one last week and they said if it was anything, it's not relaxing, and boy, was that true. It's just incredible. I watched it with my 15-year-old granddaughter because we liked mysteries and we were riveted. We still have the fourth episode to watch together when we get together. I did want to say about the directing. It was really intense. That scene with this strip search, the father's face, it was uncomfortably long but necessary in that scene. You just got such a sense of depth to these characters. It was just amazing. Including the touches on humanity, of the kindness of some of the officers that they showed. That touched me too.

Kousha Navidar: Carol, thank you so much for that call and for that insight. Here's a good text. Nick, I want to read to you and then I want to go talk about the manosphere a little bit. "As the mother of two adult sons, honestly, I think we had it easier as a generation because of Sesame Street, Zoom, and Children's Television Workshop in the US. My second son was exposed to video games and thankfully, we were able to balance reward, academic rigor, and access. I was very lucky. Neither of my son's fathers were exposed to toxic male figures who in turn did not negatively affect our boys. My perspective now is an adult woman of men and of sons. After seeing Adolescence, is to watch carefully and with great sensitivity, as was the archetype of the patient, good, nurturing mother figure in the series, who, beyond her capabilities and her own needs, held her husband, son, and daughter together despite the past and present history of both father and son. It was heartbreakingly and breathtakingly acted."

Thank you so much for that thoughtful text. Nick, I want to touch on that a little bit by talking about the manosphere, because Adolescence acknowledges this much larger discourse around manhood that's happening online. It references figures like the controversial influencer Andrew Tate, who is facing charges in Romania, including human trafficking and sexual intercourse with a minor. Can you explain the manosphere a little bit, what this movement is, and their ideas for listeners who are unfamiliar?

Nick Quah: Well, it's less a movement and more a descriptor. It's a kind of show or kind of platform usually spearheaded or mounted by a very specific kind of toxic male. Jordan Peterson is another person that you could associate with the manosphere. Joe Rogan has often been associated with the manosphere, the podcaster. Jordan Peterson is this Canadian, somewhat academic who is now writing these very, I feel reprehensible discourses on what masculinity looks like it should be. They tend to be pretty archaic in many senses.

It largely corrals around a reactionary response to what has largely been derided as woke culture today. They often believe that boys and men are being feminized. They often believe that brute, traditional masculinity, crude masculinity is a thing that should be prized. Seem to be really extreme responses to the modern shapes of what we've been talking about as a culture over the past couple of years. Of course, it has manifested in a generation of young boys and men who often feel quite angry, often are responding to the dislocation of what they feel to be the dislocation of society these days in very extreme ways. They often exist and are online. Young men and boys are accessing these ideas and interfacing with these platforms. Not just when they walk out the door away from the purview of the parents, but when they log onto the computers or when they pull out their phones.

It is, I think, one of the bigger talking points for any parents these days of how to deal not just with their boys who are being exposed to these platforms, but also how to protect everybody else around them.

Kousha Navidar: I'm really glad you brought that point up because I'm looking at the clock. We got a wrap here. I want to ask you a question about that. I want to lead in with some texts that we got, which I find very interesting. Here's one text that says, "In this tragic event, this young white boy is going through, if he were Black or Latino, the emotional feeling would be totally different." That's from Arnold. Arnold, thank you so much for that text.

We also have, "The pain of the parents in the final episode realizing how they have passed on their generational trauma really gutted me. I'm a 39-year-old woman who has gone through a decade of therapy to unlearn that trauma in my own life. I want to protect my parents from the pain of the knowledge of their faults like Jamie's parents experience." Nick, final wrap-up question here for you a little briefly. What do you think is the takeaway for parents, especially to young boys that are watching this show?

Nick Quah: It's kind of embedded in the headline of my piece here that Adolescence doesn't quite have the answer because that's not the thing that's going for. The thing it's going for is to start this conversation. The thing it's going for is to tackle this question head-on as a public, as a collective, in a way that really raises the question of we should be talking more in terms of policy. We should be talking more in terms of how we model parenthood. Ultimately, the show, even in that fourth episode, the parents are really torn about whether they could have done anything differently, how they failed their kid. Ultimately, what the show seems to evoke, and maybe there are multiple readings of this, but this is what I took away from it, is that some extent none of this is in your control but you try your best anyway. You try your best anyway, because even without the online radicalization, even without the Internet, it's a miracle that anybody survives childhood, let alone life. You try your best as parents to create the best possible probabilities.

Kousha Navidar: Nicholas Quah is a Vulture critic. Adolescence is a four-part drama series released Thursday, March 13th. Nick, thanks so much for hanging out with us. Really appreciate your thoughts.

Nick Quah: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely.