Factcheck: Was Netflix’s Adolescence based on a true story?

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Several viral social media posts in mid-March suggested Netflix drama Adolescence, which tells the story of a 13-year-old boy arrested for the murder of a teenage girl, was based on a real case involving a black boy, even though the drama’s main character was white.

And in interviews on April 1, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch appeared to make a similar claim, saying 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, though one has said it was inspired by several real-life incidents.

The series has been linked on social media to various different real-life cases. For example, one viral post on X shared a screenshot of a 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 girl with a kitchen knife in Croydon.

Interviews

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-creator Stephen Graham.

Mr Graham, who also acted in the drama, said in an article published on March 4: “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?”

Although we’ve not seen any quotes from Mr Graham specifying which incidents he was referring to, other than Brianna Ghey’s murder, several media reports have suggested that the London stabbing he mentioned was the murder committed by Sentamu, which occurred at a bus stop.

‘Race-swapped’

None of the reports suggested Adolescence was based on a single true story, however, and in a subsequent interview on a podcast – on March 26, 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.”

We contacted Mrs Badenoch for comment.

Full Fact is the UK’s largest fact-checking charity, working to find, expose and counter the harms of bad information.