Adolescence Review | When Expectations Are Way Too High!

Adolescence must be the most (over-)hyped shows that has been released in quite some time as all I heard about it was universal praise and perfect 10 out of 10s. I first heard about it from a friend who watched it and recommended it to me and later in the day they also talked about it on tv after which I looked it up on the internet where all I saw was 'Series Of The Year' / 'Everyone Should Watch it and if possible with their kids' / ... . So I went into this one with crazy high expectations and the intention to just binge watch as it's only 4 episodes long. These high expectations were one of the many things that kind of made this one turn into a major let down. It was also only because it were only 4 episodes that I actually finished it as if it were 6 or more I would have just skipped after half an episode similar to what I did when giving 'The White Lotus' a chance.

So in this review, I'm kind of coming from the opposite side to lower the expectations to anyone who has yet to watch it

The Main Plot of Adolescence

So the Series is about a 13-Year old boy who stabbed a girl from school, his arrest (The 1st episode / Day 1), The Police going to the School to get more info on where to find the Murder Weapon (The 2nd episode / Day 3), A psychologist having a rather awkward weird talk with the 13-Year-Old (The 3rd episode / Month 7), The Family Going Through their Day and getting some closure (The 4th episode / Month 13).

The gimmick of this series is that each episode is shot in 1 take which to be fair is done quite well. However, from what I've read, they started with the idea to make a show this way and afterward came up with a story. The core idea about the show is how Andrew Tate and social media is having a real bad influence on young boys. The idea also came from some real life knife killings from boys in the uk.

The Things I Didn't like

The main thing I had an issue with for this show is that I just didn't buy the idea that a 13-Year-Old boy like Jamie ended up just stabbing a girl to death because he somewhat got bullied and that it all came from the influence of someone like Andrew Tate online. The way I see it, you just need to be a serious Psycho by default or because of certain abuse during your upbringing to do a thing like that. In that way, I just didn't relate to it at all and I also found the story aside from it rather thin. At times it dragged on quite long which made me get bored and distracted. The 3rd episode also was just weird for me with some sexual topics discussed with a 13-Year-old by the psychologist and the anger outburst of the kid feeling kind of forced at times. I also just missed a real story as there was only really 1 interesting development when the cop talked to his son at school who explained the emoji & incell thing.

The way it was filmed was done well but also kind of felt like a gimmick after a while.

Conclusion

For me, Adolescence just didn't live up to the hype and the extremely high expectations going into it only lead to dissapointment as I just wasn't sold on the story because I simply didn't relate to it or found it believabe. The way it was filmed was nice but after some time kind of felt like a gimmick and things at times dragged on because of it. I fully understand that for some people this is a really good show and topic they can relate to maybe because they have kids. However, for me going in with really high expectations, it just didn't do it. I didn't hate it but also can't give it more that a 6.8/10 purely based that I was not sold on the plot while the series allowed me to get distracted at times in the end being glad I got it over with.

#	2025 Watched Tv-Series	Score
#01 Series	Silo Season 2	7.1/10
#02 Anime	Death Note	8.9/10
#03 Series	Severance Season 2	8.9/10
#04 Series	Adolescence	6.8/10