‘A Dumpster Fire of Lies’: Netflix Series Race-Swaps British Crime Trend, Journalists Treat It Like a Documentary
3rd April 2025
When I first encountered the online buzz around the new Netflix series Adolescence, I didn’t have a strong reaction. Streaming services have replaced TV and movies as the primary pop culture sources of entertainment, but it’s been many years since I paid much attention to such things. My idea of “entertainment” is YouTube videos of Arkansas State Police doing PIT maneuvers — reality being far more interesting to me than the fictional product of some screenwriter’s imagination.
What I did know about Adolescence was that it is set in England, and that the screenwriters had essentially reversed the races of contemporary crime trends in the United Kingdom, by making a white boy the knife-wielding killer. Despite the news media’s reluctance to deal with this honestly, anyone who pays attention to crime news out of Britain knows who is implicated in the surge of stabbing sprees there. It’s not a secret.