Was Netflix’s Adolescence based on a true story?

We’ve seen a number of different claims about the Netflix drama Adolescence, which tells the story of a 13-year-old boy who is arrested for the murder of a teenage girl, being based on a true story.

Several viral social media posts in mid-March suggested that the series was based on a real story involving a black boy, even though the main character in the drama was white.

And in interviews on 1 April, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch appeared to make a similar claim, saying that she understood “that the boy who committed that crime was not white”.

However the show’s co-creators have said the series isn’t based on any single case. One said in an interview at the start of March that Adolescence had been inspired by at least three different real-life incidents, while the other said in a 26 March interview that “there is no part of this that’s based on a true story”.

What’s been claimed?

We’ve seen lots of posts about this on social media, linking the drama to different real-life cases.

For example, on 19 March one post on X (formerly Twitter) with almost 200,000 likes showed a screenshot of a BBC news article, which it said was an image of “the person it was based on”. The article in question reported that a teenager, Hassan Sentamu, had been jailed for life after murdering a 15-year-old with a kitchen knife in Croydon.

Another X post on 20 March said the show was “based on real life cases such as the Southport murderer”, adding: “They race swapped the actual killer.” 

Others on social media have suggested in recent days that Adolescence was based on a single real-life case. 

In an interview with GB News on 1 April, Mrs Badenoch was asked about the Prime Minister holding a meeting around the show, and if she thought white boys were being wrongly singled out, to which she responded: “Well, I think Adolescence is a fictional story. It’s based on a real story, but my understanding is that the boy who committed that crime was not white.”

Mrs Badenoch also appeared to suggest the drama was based on a single case in an interview with LBC the same day. She said she had not watched the programme, because “I don’t have time to watch anything these days, to be honest”, but later added: “I’ve given a view that it is a work of fiction that is interesting, that touches on a problem in society.

“But there are bigger problems such as Islamic terrorism and that kind of radicalisation and the story which it is based on has been fundamentally changed and so creating policy on a work of fiction rather than on reality is the real issue.”

What did the show’s creators say?

Claims about Adolescence being based on a true story appear to have stemmed at least in part from interviews last month with the show’s co-writer and co-creator Stephen Graham. 

Mr Graham, who also acted in the programme, told Radio Times Magazine in an article published on 4 March: “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?

“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?”

Mr Graham made similar comments suggesting the idea for the series had come from multiple incidents to Tudum, Netflix’s official companion site. And in a radio interview he said: “Look, it started when I read an article, and it was an article about a young boy who'd stabbed a young girl to death, and it just, you know, it made me feel cold. 

“And then a couple of months later, there was a piece on the news, and it was about a young boy who'd stabbed a young girl to death, and if I'm really honest with you, they hurt my heart. 

“And these two incidents were opposite ends of the country. And I just thought, ‘Why? Why is this happening?’”

Although we’ve not seen any quotes from Mr Graham specifying which incidents he was referring to, other than Brianna Ghey’s murder, media reports have linked his comments to other specific cases. 

In particular, several outlets have suggested that the London stabbing he referred to was the murder committed by Sentamu, which also occurred at a bus stop. 

For example a SurreyLive headline published 14 March said “Netflix's Adolescence inspired by true story of Croydon girl's horrific murder”, while The Sunday Times headlined a 30 March feature about Sentamu as: “Who inspired Adolescence? The making of a teenage killer”. (Both articles included quotes from Mr Graham making it clear the bus stop murder was only one of the cases that inspired the show.)

None of these interviews or reports suggested that Adolescence had only been based on a single true story, however, and in a subsequent interview with the News Agents podcast—on 26 March, before Mrs Badenoch’s remarks—the drama’s co-writer and co-creator Jack Thorne said there was no truth to claims the characters had been “race-swapped”.

He said: “I have told a lot of real-life stories in my time. I know the harm that can come when you take elements of a real-life story, and you put it on screen, and the people aren’t expecting it. There is no part of this that’s based on a true story, not one single part.”

He went on to add: “It’s absurd to say that this is only committed by black boys, it’s absurd, it’s not true. And history, you know, shows a lot of cases of kids from all races committing these crimes.

“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.”

Despite some on social media mentioning last year’s Southport murders in connection with Adolescence, we’ve not seen any evidence that that attack was one of the incidents which inspired the show. 

Adolescence was reportedly filmed between March and September 2024, and so had already started filming before the Southport murders in July 2024.

We have contacted Mrs Badenoch for comment, and will update this article if she responds.