Blog | Adolescence: When Seeing Is Possessing

Good storytelling engages, but great storytelling enthralls. It doesn't simply entertain; it disarms, deceives, and leaves you spellbound, say, like the illusion of a veteran magician. You see the trick unfold, yet surrender willingly, captivated by the craft. That's the triumph of the pilot episode of Adolescence, the British crime drama miniseries that has emerged as an unexpected spring blockbuster for Netflix. Everyone seems to be talking about it, everyone seems to be moved by its gut-wrenching realism. “A technical masterclass,” they say, marveling at the audacity of an entire series captured in a single, continuous take. And then, there's the inevitable refrain—“That third episode? Peak television.” They're right. That third episode is a narrative feat (and we'll get there soon). But for now, let's talk about the opening hour. That first, searing plunge into a world that grips you by the collar.

The Noose Tightens

It's early morning. DI Luke Bascombe (Ashley Walters) and his team raid a house. They move with practised urgency. They are many. Armed, deliberate, prepared for the worst. The house is torn apart, every corner overturned. You assume they're after a fugitive, someone dangerous, someone capable of unspeakable harm. But then comes the shock. They're here for a boy. Jamie (Owen Cooper), 13 years old, arrested on suspicion of murder. The sight unsettles. You want to pause, to question. But the moment doesn't wait. Jamie crumbles as they lead him away. At the station, the machinery grinds on. Procedural questions. Strip searches. Blood samples. The sterile hum of officialdom. A chilling interrogation. And then it's revealed: he really did it. Jamie, just 13, is here for a reason. He's not a victim of some mistake or misunderstanding. He stabbed someone. Took a life. The words land heavily. 

This is not simply the opening of a show. It is the tightening of a noose. But while the revelation is startling, what truly unsettled me was something else entirely. The cold, mechanical rhythm of the characters' lives. Throughout the first episode, the way they speak, the way they move, every gesture feels calculated. Even in the face of brutality, there is no rupture; only the sterile hum of procedure. It's as if discipline has seeped into their very mannerisms. It's as if the supposed politeness isn't kindness; it's a polished form of control. Bascombe, his colleagues, the local solicitor, the sergeants, the nurse—all operate like cogs in a machine. Their words are measured, their actions devoid of warmth.  Even care, when offered, feels like protocol. There's really only the numbing precision of a system that demands compliance.

While watching all of this, what struck me most was how these people had become docile bodies. A term coined by French philosopher Michel Foucault in his seminal work Discipline and Punish. He spoke of individuals molded by the quiet machinery of control, shaped into submission through the subtleties of discipline and surveillance. In modern societies, Foucault argued, power rarely announces itself with force. Instead, it seeps into the everyday: through routines, regulations, and the omnipresent gaze of authority. It demands not only obedience but internalisation. After all, then the body becomes a vessel of compliance, its movements measured, its desires restrained. Here, too, the characters are not simply participants in a system; they are its products. Their behaviour, their speech, even their notions of care, are dictated by the very structures that claim to uphold order. What remains is a hollowed-out humanity, where conformity is not just expected but inevitable.

Challenging Foucalt Himself

However, as the episode ends, this reading feels almost trivial: a passing thought, an unnecessary subtextual implication. The show, it seems, isn't primarily concerned with Foucault's complex notions. It is far too preoccupied with its own urgencies to dwell on the mechanics of docility. But then, it startles once more. In the episodes that follow, it keeps circling back to those very ideas. Each time in a different setting, with heightened stakes, sharper conflicts, and more layered resolutions. It's as if the show refuses to let go of the question, bending it to its will. It's as though the show urges us to chase the answers, daring us to plunge headlong into the unknown. And in doing so, it doesn't merely echo Foucault; it sometimes challenges him. It bends his theories, reshapes them, and casts them into the fractured mirror of contemporary society. 

If the first episode subtly explored the subjugation within the walls of a police station, the second shifts its gaze to a school. A space where docile bodies are not just maintained but conscientiously crafted. However, unlike the rigid confines of the station, the school is all about chaos. Here, Bascombe and DS Misha Frank (Faye Marsay) arrive seeking answers, yet find themselves confronted by something far more unsettling. Teachers wear their anxieties like second skins, students roam unchecked, smartphones capture every moment, and bullying thrives openly. The questions about the murder are met with ridicule. The students mock, dismiss, and toy with the detectives' authority. This is no orderly institution. The children are not the obedient figures Foucault spoke of—not yet, at least.

Discipline Is Control

But then, things suddenly change. A false fire alarm is heard, and, in an instant, discipline materialises. Without force, without resistance, bodies fall in line. The unruly become compliant. They are led to the grounds, organised into rows. It is here that Foucault's theories breathe afresh. Schools, he argued, are sites of regulation and subversion. Places where control is enforced not through visible chains, but through routine. The simple acts of standing in line, sitting still, or rehearsing drills are no accidents. They are rehearsals of obedience, performances of submission. And just like that, the illusion of chaos is shattered, revealing the order that was always waiting beneath. Much like the show's fixation with docility, which very much stays beneath the surface, until the third episode brings it surging forth. No longer subtle, no longer concealed, as if it had only been waiting to be seen. In fact, you barely notice when it shifts from the periphery to become one of the show's central thematic foundations.

If the first episode was about who did it, and the second about why he did it, then the third asks a deeper question: what made him do it? This time, the setting shifts to a children's mental-health facility, yet another institution Foucault examined. A space designed to mold individuals, enforce conformity, and internalise discipline. But it's not just the walls of the facility that confine Jamie. The episode also interrogates the varied forces that shape his perceptions of masculinity and the opposite sex. The media he consumes, the influences he absorbs. Independent psychologist Briony (a terrific Erin Doherty) arrives to assess him. Their conversation begins on a deceptively light note, but the undercurrent of unease is quick to rise. Tension coils tightly, words become weapons, and what starts as a dialogue soon fractures into something far more volatile. The episode unfolds almost entirely within a single room, yet the space is anything but static. 

The Uneasy Undercurrents

Every exchange crackles with complexity. There are shifting sympathies, uneasy silences, unspoken truths. For the characters, the spectators and the makers, it's nothing less than a psychological tug-of-war. And by the time the final words are spoken, the show's thematic core stands bare, impossible to ignore. The episode begins with Briony being uneasy in the presence of an old guard. But by the end, it is really Jamie, a teenager, who unsettles her. His gaze disturbs, disarms, discourages. At moments, it borders on an assertion of power that tilts the room in his favour. This ties into something larger: docility entwined with patriarchy, the way women are conditioned to internalise the gaze, to self-discipline before they are disciplined. A body that resists, that refuses to be subdued, becomes a threat, and threats are often erased. Perhaps that is why the victim, Jamie's schoolmate, is never seen. Perhaps that is why, at a breaking point, Frank's frustration spills out: how the girl will be forgotten, how the story will always be about Jamie.

Through Jamie, the creators (Jack Thorne, Stephen Graham) interpret docility in its rawest form. His conversations with Briony uncover the isolation and bullying that defined his school life, showing how he stumbles into incel forums and the manosphere, where resentment festers and power is promised. Andrew Tate becomes his guiding light, and bit by bit, the world's misogyny molds him. He might view himself as reclaiming masculinity, but in reality, he is a docile body, subservient to the same heteronormative, misogynistic structures that claim to liberate him. And as Foucault argued long before this age of screens, technology only tightens the grip. The panopticon no longer needs prison walls. Now it thrives in algorithms, in likes and comments that surveil and shape without presence. Behavior shifts. Patterns form. Not because we are seen, but because we might be.

Home As A Prison?

It's this idea of watchfulness that begins to unsettle Jamie's parents in the final episode, which is also the most subversive and gut-wrenching of the lot. This time, the institution under scrutiny is not a school, a police station, or a mental-health facility. It is a home. And at its centre stands a family, crumbling under the burden of what they failed to see. We see Eddie (a devastating Stephen Graham) seething with rage, his fear spilling over into violence. In fact, in a moment of uncontrollable outrage, he nearly harms two teenagers. His voice echoes through the house, his shouts filling the air. He storms through rooms, arguing with his wife, clutching desperately at the illusion of protecting his daughter. But as the walls close in, a question remains: how much of Jamie's violence was inherited? Did his father's anger, his unchecked masculinity, seep into him like a second skin?

Perhaps Eddie wonders the same. In the closing moments, he breaks down, consumed by the unbearable thought: where did I go wrong? His wife, in her own disbelief, wrestles with another question: how was Jamie always there, just across the room, yet so distant? Was it that they didn't watch him closely enough? Or perhaps, in his desperation not to become like his own father, Eddie became something else entirely. A father who looked without seeing. It's also the same realisation that hits Bascombe toward the end of the second episode. He finally begins to see his son, to realise that on any other given day, his son could very well be in Jamie's place.

It's only fitting that a show this precise and urgent ultimately turns its gaze on the act of watching itself. After all, surveillance lies at the heart of Foucault's ideas on docility. And it's only fitting that the show's form embodies this tension. The choice to shoot each episode in a single, unbroken take is more than an aesthetic decision; it is an assertion of control, a visual manifestation of the systems it critiques. In this act of watching, we become complicit. Cinema, too, is a panopticon, its subjects shifting under our gaze, influenced by the very act of being seen. And perhaps, like Jamie, we mistake watching for knowing, surveillance for control, as if to see something is to possess it.

(Anas Arif is a film writer and a media graduate from AJKMCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author