Netflix and Warp Films’ one-shot Yorkshire drama Adolescence has made history by becoming the first streaming program ever to top the UK’s weekly TV ratings.
Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham‘s drama beat out long-standing legacy broadcaster favourites like the BBC’s The Apprentice (third with 5.797m viewers) and Death in Paradise (fourth, 5.754m) after its first episode was watched by 6.45m people in the first week of release, March 10-16, according to ratings body Barb. Episode 2 was in second place with 5.938m viewers, while Episode 3 slotted into 5th place after the two Beeb favourites.
It’s the biggest audience for any streaming TV show in the U.K. in a single week, leapfrogging Fool Me Once, also on Netflix (and also set in the North, Manchester and the North West this time), which accrued 6.3m in its first week on release.
The show tells the story of Jamie, in a scene-stealing performance by Manchester-trained first timer Owen Cooper, a 13-year-old boy who is accused of stabbing a girl from his school to death. Viewers are taken through the harrowing story from beginning to end: His arrest and first police interview, the detectives attempting to put the pieces of the case together, a child psychologist sent to assess Jamie and the family forced to re-evaluate every parental decision that led to the life-changing events.
Boiling Point star Graham, as well as former So Solid Crew member and Top Boy star Ashley Walters, Erin Doherty, Faye Marsay and Christine Tremarco also star.
The show comes during something of a purple patch for Northern productions on the US streaming giant. Manchester’s Quay Street Productions has been in on the act too, producing not only the previous record holder Fool Me Once, but further Harlan Coben adaptations including 2024’s Missing You, and the James Nesbitt-starrer Run Away, which started shooting in and around Manchester in January.
Adolescence executive producer and Warp Films creative chief Emily Feller told Prolific North recently that the Northern setting was a crucial element in the show’s production process: “We use local crew as much as physically possible, local cast as much as physically possible. It was a really big discussion with us, making sure that each of the departments were using local people,” she said.
