“Adolescence” Is Brilliant, Miserable, and Absolutely Not a Binge-Watch

The strongest show on television right now is Adolescence, and I hated nearly every minute of watching it. This is a compliment. The Netflix drama follows a 13-year-old boy accused of murdering a classmate, but it is less a whodunit than a four-part autopsy of modern boyhood, online radicalization, parental panic, and the terrifying moment adults realize they may not know their own child at all.

Each episode unfolds in a single continuous take, a gimmick that sounds like director homework until it becomes the show’s secret weapon. The camera never gives you a polite escape hatch. It drifts through a school, a police station, a family home, and a juvenile detention center while everyone keeps talking past the thing they cannot bear to say. Episode two, set inside the school, is particularly devastating: a swarm of teenage noise slowly reveals a culture adults have mistaken for harmless chaos.

The performances are excellent across the board, especially Owen Cooper as Jamie, who plays the central boy not as a miniature monster but as a confused, lonely child capable of doing something monstrous. That distinction is the whole point, and the show refuses to offer the comforting answer that one evil kid explains everything.

Benny’s Picks

Adolescence — Netflix. Watch it, but space out the episodes. This is powerful television, not recreational television. Bingeing it is like eating four Thanksgiving dinners while someone reads you a criminal indictment.

Fleishman Is in Trouble — Hulu. If you want another sharp drama about adults discovering that the story they told themselves is incomplete, this underrated miniseries is your move. It starts like a divorce story and gradually becomes a sly investigation into whose pain gets believed.

Dummy by Lisa McGee — available wherever books are sold. McGee’s novel is funny, strange, and deeply uncomfortable about identity and performance. It has the rare quality of making you laugh and then wonder whether laughing was morally permitted.

Skip It: Any “dark” teen drama promising to explain Gen Z with a sinister soundtrack. Most of these shows treat the internet like a haunted forest and teenagers like malfunctioning chess pieces. Adolescence works because it understands that the real horror is ordinary adults being distracted, tired, defensive, and late.

Sleeper Pick: “The Curse” on Paramount+ with Showtime. It is still one of television’s strangest and most rewarding pieces of social satire. Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone play two unbearable people making unbearable choices, which somehow becomes a devastating story about marriage, money, guilt, and the spiritual consequences of owning a camera.