 "Owen Cooper plays the role of Jamie Miller, a 13-year-old boy accused of murdering his classmate. While the series is not based on a true crime, far-right influencers are spreading misinformation about race-swapping. Image courtesy: Netflix")
Is Netflix’s Adolescence inspired by a true crime? That’s one of the many questions being googled on the acclaimed limited series about 13-year-old Jamie Miller ( Owen Cooper ), accused of murdering his classmate Katie.
The answer is no. Adolescence is not based on a true story. However, it is inspired by the news. Its creators say it is based on news stories of young boys involved in knife crimes in the United Kingdom.
Stephen Graham, the co-creator of the show who also plays Jamie’s father, said that Adolescence is inspired by very specific incidents — a “spate” of violent acts committed by teenage boys against teenage girls in Great Britain.
The hit show has become part of the mainstream conversation, from the UK to India. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said it should even be screened in schools. Amid the plaudits, come the criticisms, with some talking about race-swapping.
What’s the race-swapping controversy surrounding Adolescence?
The story of the 13-year-old murder accused is not a whodunit but more of a why. It goes to the root of the cause of violence against women and gives us an insight into the toxic world of social media and the rise of the manosphere and incels .
But now, a backlash has started after a post on X spewing misinformation went viral, claiming that Adolescence had “race-swapped” the protagonist from Black to White.
“Netflix has a show called Adolescence that’s about a British knife killer who stabbed a girl to death on a bus and it’s based on real life cases such as the Southport murderer,” Ian Miles Cheong, a right-wing blogger, posted on X on March 20.
“So guess what. They race swapped the actual killer from a black man/migrant to a white boy and the story has it so he was radicalized online by the red pill movement. Just the absolute state of anti-white propaganda.”
Cheong’s post has 13,000 shares, 78,000 likes and 4,700 comments, including from tech billionaire and Doge leader Elon Musk, who wrote, “Wow”.
Cheong, who has 1.2 million followers, was referring to Southport killer Axel Rudakubana , who was sentenced to a minimum of 52 years for the murder of three young girls. The 18-year-old stabbed the children, aged six, seven and nine, to death during a Taylor Swift-themed workshop on July 29 2024.
Rudakubana was born in Cardiff after his parents came to the UK from Rwanda. The killings led to clashes between the anti-immigrant and anti-racism protesters after the far-right spread misinformation about the killer’s identity.
According to a report in Entertainment Weekly, the Netflix show was conceived and written months before the attack. The makers started filming in early July 2024, while the stabbings happened later that month.
Another X user who identified as Catholic, MAGA-Hulk and an attorney at law, wrote on X, “Jack Thorne created and wrote Adolescence on Netflix, where the murderer was race-swapped from a black migrant teen to a young conservative English boy.”
There are several posts on X which claim that the show is based on the murder of Elianne Andam.
Evelina Hahne, a Swedish far-right politician, wrote on X, “The new Netflix series ”Adolescence”, inspired by the murder of Elianne Andam, depicts a white teenager as the killer.
However, the real murderer was Hassan Sentamu. This is how they brainwash us into believing white men are the problem, when in fact, it’s immigrants.
Andam, a 15-year-old schoolgirl, was stabbed to death by Hassan Sentamu outside a shopping centre in South London in September 2023. The 17-year-old killer was jailed for life; he reportedly had a history of attacking girls and carrying knives.
Sentamu repeatedly stabbed the girl in a row over a teddy bear. Both Andam and Sentamu are Black. However, the show’s creators have not made any mention of this case.
What are the makers of the show saying?
Thorne, who wrote the four-part series, has refuted that it is based on real-life events.
“They’ve claimed that Stephen [Graham] and I based it on a story, and so they’re saying that we race-swapped it, because we were basically here and then ended up there, and everything else, and nothing is further from the truth,” the writer told The News Agents Podcast.
“It’s absurd to say that this [crime] is only committed by Black boys… We’re not making a point about race with this. We are making a point about masculinity. We’re trying to get inside a problem. We’re not saying this is one thing or another. We’re saying this is about boys,” Thorne said after criticism that Jamie’s character was white.“There is no part of this that’s based on a true story.”
Graham had earlier said that there was not one specific case that led him to write the drama, but several cases of child murderers. “Where it came from, for me is there was an incident in Liverpool, a young girl, and she was stabbed to death by a young boy. I just thought, why?” the writer-actor told the Radio Times magazine.
“Then there was another young girl in South London who was stabbed to death at a bus stop. And there was this thing up North, where that young girl Brianna Ghey was lured into the park by two teenagers, and they stabbed her. I just thought, what’s going on? What is this that’s happening?”
What do we know about cases of teenage stabbings in the UK?
On 25 November 2021, Ava White, 12, was stabbed to death by a 14-year-old boy in Liverpool City Centre after a row over a Snapchat video.
The boy, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, claimed that he accidentally stabbed her in self-defence but was found guilty after the trial. He was sentenced to life with a minimum of 13 years.
Ava and her friends got into an argument with the teenage boy and his friends after they recorded Snapchat videos of the girls. She was rushed to a hospital with injuries and died shortly after.
The boy was reportedly smiling after attacking Ava. He dumped the knife and then went to a friend’s house, where he told his mother he was playing a computer game. He was arrested two hours after the crime.
While Ava’s mother, Leanne White, has praised Adolescence, she has hit back at reports that link the show to her daughter. “It’s got nothing to do with Ava whatsoever,” she told BBC Radio Merseyside. It makes me really angry as well that Ava’s name keeps on getting put alongside – it’s about the perpetrator, it’s not about Ava.”
The mother said she had checked interviews and public comments from the show’s writers, and there had been no mention of Ava.
While Graham has not mentioned Ava, he did speak of Brianna Ghey. The 16-year-old, who was transgender, was stabbed 28 times in broad daylight after being lured to a park in Warrington, Cheshire, on February 11, 2024. Scarlett Jenkinson and Eddie Ratcliffe, who were 15 at the time, were arrested and convicted of murder in December.
Brianna and Scarlett had met in school and spent time outside socially. Scarlett and Eddie have known each other since they were 11. Brianna met the boy only hours before she was killed. She believed the three were meeting to hang out in the park, reports the BBC.
The trial revealed that Scarlett and Eddie, who were fascinated with violence and torture, had planned the murder for weeks. They messaged each other about how they would carry out the killing.
While these are the cases most spoken about since the release of the show, there have been several such stabbings .
According to the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS), 83 per cent of teen homicides in 2023-24 involved a blade. In the year ending March 2024, approximately 50,500 sharp instrument-related offences were recorded in England and Wales (excluding Greater Manchester). This is a 4.4 per cent increase from 2022-23. Juveniles aged 10 to 17 were responsible for about 17.3 per cent of these crimes, reports Forbes.
The statistics tell a scary tale. This problem is not something the UK is grappling with alone. Similar cases have been reported from across the world.
Netflix’s Adolescence, then, is a big wake-up call. It’s a story about social media and school bullies, of fragile masculinity and rage. It’s about a lot of things, but it’s not about Black or white.
With inputs from agencies