The Child With The Man In His Eyes:Adolescence.

80% of women are only interested in 20% of men. That's the lie that appears to be dominating the 'manosphere' at the moment and even if it's not a lie (which it is) how and why would that lead us down a path into a world of imagined 'feminazis', 'feminisim is cancer', pick up artists, incels, and Men Going Their Own Way?

That's the question Netflix's Adolescence (created and written by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham, directed by Philip Barantini) dares to ask and, as with last year's Mr Bates vs The Post Office, it's a television show that has got people talking, got people looking for answers, has seen a large part of one episode of this week's Newsnight devoted to it, and has got politicians at least saying the right things. If things do change however? Well, that's an entirely different matter.

Adolescence doesn't suggest any answers and nor does it explicitly point the finger of blame in any one direction. While adults, and adults only, may talk about Andrew Tate, the kids talk about red pills and blue pills as well as incel culture. The manosphere isn't something delivered to them by the likes of Tate and Jordan Peterson (for many teenagers, those two are yesterday's news) but something they live much of their daily lives inside of. 

Both online and offline. Served up by Instagram algorithms, emboldened by the likes of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, and waved through by populist politicians eager to court the disenfranchised youth vote. But thirteen year old Jamie Miller (played, brilliantly, by Owen Cooper in, amazingly, his first ever role) isn't, at least at first sight, the sort of kid you'd expect to be pulled in by this noxious strain of thinking.

Jamie's a good student, he's doing well at school where he's particularly interested in Isambard Kingdom Brunel and the Industrial Revolution, and he's from a kind loving family. Dad Eddie (Stephen Graham) is a plumber, Mum Manda (Christine Tremarco) cooks a mean roast, and elder sister Lisa (Amelie Pease, another first timer) is a typical teenage girl. They're a spectacularly ordinary family. The type of family you will have met (and liked) many times. The type of family you may well come from.

So when Jamie is arrested by heavily armed police in his own bedroom at 6am one morning, their lives change forever. Jamie has murdered a girl from school, Katie. Stabbing her multiple times with a kitchen knife. Jamie denies everything and his family believe him. He's so scared when the police break in to his house that he pisses himself. Surely a boy this young, this innocent looking, could not be capable of such a brutal and heinous crime? He still sleeps with his teddy bear.

Yet we know, from the start, that he is. There's CCTV footage to prove it. None of this a spoiler in any way. Adolescence is not a whodunnit. The question here is why did he do it? Why did a bright thirteen year old boy from a happy, loving family violently end a young girl's life? Is that a question that can ever be satisfactorily answered?

Adolescence doesn't offer easy, or definitive, answers. When DI Bascombe (Ashley Walters) and DS Frank (Faye Marsay) visit Jamie's school they find an almost prison like environment of bullying, kids excited by violence and watching violent videos, phone addiction, coded heart emojis, and teachers who have given up. Teachers like Mr Malik (Faraz Ayub) who think the kids are "fucking impossible". In the playground, flowers and teddy bears mark an all too familiar tribute to a murdered child.

An entire, and very powerful, episode is given over to Jamie's meeting with psycholgist Briony Ariston (Erin Doherty). They talk about family, masculinity, what being a man feels like, how Jamie feels about girls and women, and how he feels about sex, how he feels about himself. It's very tense and it gets very heated. For the most part, what Jamie says is not that different to what a huge number of teenage boys would say and think, either now or in the past.

But it's the times he crosses the line that are the most telling. The aggressive comments he's written under photos of women and girls on Instagram, the anger that swells up within him when he feels cornered, emasculated, or made to look stupid. The margins of transgression start very small but then extend very easily into deeply troubling behaviour.

All of which makes Adolescence a painful and uncomfortable watch as well as a frustrating and heartbreaking one. It's also a very engrossing watch (I binged all four episodes in one sitting) and sadly, right now, a very very important one. It's brilliantly acted by an excellent cast (I should also give credit to Jo Hartley as teacher Mrs Fenumore, Mark Stanley as Jamie's solicitor, Amari Bacchus as DI Balcombe's son Adam (at the same school as both Jamie and Katie), Kaine Davis as Jamie's friend Ryan, and Fatima Bojang who plays Katie's friend Jade, understandably struggling to control the anger she feels towards those responsible for Katie's death) and there's also a surprisingly moving version of Sting's Fragile - sung by what sounds like a school choir - halfway through and during one of the many moments when Adolescence allows actions, and not words, to speak to us the loudest.

The makers of Adolescence do a wonderful job of showing us how cases like this affect everyone in their orbit. Jamie's family, the pupils and teachers at the school, the police, the psychologists. Though there is no focus whatsoever on Katie's grieving family. Which could be seen as an oversight if this was not a show that clearly intended to shine a light on a very real crisis in masculinity that seems only to be getting worse.

Perhaps it was ever thus. Perhaps we're just (finally) paying more attention to it. But perhaps it is getting worse. Perhaps online trolls whose names we need not dwell on right now are juicing this for their own financial benefit while at the same time causing ever more suffering to young women and young men. On Newsnight this week, Adolescence's creator Jack Thorne spoke about how, since the show has been aired, he's had his own masculinity called in to question, had it suggested to him that he may have too much oestrogen and that he may not even be a man, and been told he's Jewish. Which he isn't - but how is that even relevant?

Depressingly, men have always committed crimes against women in far higher numbers than women have committed crimes against men. Many of those crimes are violent and a terrifyingly high number result in women, and girls, dying. What seems to be happening now is that it's starting younger and younger as Internet fuelled hatred spills ever more fully formed into everyday life, as online life merges with offline life. Adolescence made a brilliant job of showing us how severe the problem is. It's up to all of us, men, women, girls, and boys, to find an answer and drive this hatred out before it tears us all apart. Before more innocent people die. Incredible and brave television like this is the first step on what may prove to be a long and difficult journey. But a journey that simply has to be made.