Adolescence's Emmys triumph proves America is finally taking British TV seriously

Telegraph

15-07-2025

It is with some irony that it took a show called Adolescence for American viewers to finally grow up, but Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham's unsparing social drama has triumphed in the States where many other superb British dramas have foundered. With 13 Emmy nominations, the remarkable thing about it is that Adolescence is the sort of gritty social realism that our American cousins have found difficult to digest.
British television has always found favour in America, it's just they prefer something far more heightened to the reality of day-to-day UK life. They lap up the chocolate box (Downton Abbey, Call the Midwife), the fantastical (Sherlock, Luther), the quirky (Slow Horses, Fleabag), and tend to shun anything that resembles our proud tradition of kitchen-sink drama. Happy Valley, for instance, made barely a ripple on the other side of the Atlantic, while Thorne and Graham's other TV triumph, This Is England (86, 88 and 90), is no more than a curio. 'Jimmy McGovern' would be the answer to a supremely difficult pub quiz question in America.
British television isn't reality in the US. It's toffs and knights and lords and ladies, it's charming working-class tinkers and jolly amateur bakers, it's quirky detectives and honourable spies. There is a reason that Game of Thrones was made with British accents – Britain is the land of fantasy. Or, at best, the land of history. Take a glance at the most popular shows on PBS Masterpiece and you'll find Grantchester, All Creatures Great and Small, Poldark and The Durrells. All completely charming; all, essentially, cartoons.
Adolescence is a different breed entirely, a grim and grimy naturalistic drama about a young boy in a northern town whose life is bent tragically out of shape by the toxic influence of the online 'manosphere'. Even Baby Reindeer, which picked up 11 nominations last year, despite its hard-hitting topics of stalking and sexual abuse, was appealingly off-kilter and had the whiff of a cracking true-crime podcast. Adolescence gives the American viewer absolutely no sugar whatsoever. And if it has whetted the appetite stateside for gritty British drama, they have a treasure trove of a back catalogue to catch up on.
Away from Adolescence, the nominations will have surprised no one. A mixture of Emmy beloveds (Hacks, The White Lotus, Severance, Andor, The Bear) and glossy newcomers with A-list stars (The Penguin, The Studio, The Pitt, Paradise). The Emmy voters seem not to care when a series has gone stale (The Bear) or when an actor they love is in a terrible show (Uzo Aduba in the already cancelled The Residence). They seem resistant to anything that smells of 'art' – no major nominations for Nathan Fielder's sensational The Rehearsal makes them look a little, well, a little Golden Globe-y.
Let us hope that Adolescence sweeps the board – I am rooting for Owen Cooper, 15, to become the youngest ever Emmy acting winner, while seasoned British TV viewers will be utterly delighted by Christine Tremarco's (who played youngster Jamie's mother) nomination – and that it shows wider America that the British can do serious, grown-up television every bit as well as they can.