Netflix’s critically acclaimed UK crime drama Adolescence has officially surpassed Stranger Things to become the streamer’s second most-watched English-language TV series.
The crime drama miniseries co-created by and starring Stephen Graham debuted March 13 and just recently reached a mega milestone of 141.2 million total views, putting it above the fourth season of Stranger Things, which initially held the spot at 140.7 million views.
The debut season of the platform’s Addams Family spin-off, Wednesday, starring Jenna Ortega, remains at the top of Netflix’s list with an astounding 252.1 million total views in its first 91 days.
Comparatively, season one of the streamer’s popular Korean-language thriller Squid Game is the platform’s most popular non-English language TV series, amassing 265.2 million views in its first three months.
Adolescence, which is expected to land several Emmy nominations next month, recently swept at the 2025 Gotham TV Awards.
It took the prize for Breakthrough Limited Series, as well as two acting awards for Graham and young newcomer Owen Cooper for Outstanding Lead Performance in a Limited Series and Outstanding Supporting Performance in a Limited Series, respectively.
“We’re overwhelmed for you to embrace us the way you have,” Graham said in his acceptance speech. “This was a small colloquial piece that was made with love, respect, humility and dignity, and we treated the subject with a lot of passion, but a lot of care.”
Out now on Netflix, Adolescence is a four-part series that follows the dramatic aftermath of a 13-year-old boy, Jamie (Cooper), who’s arrested for murdering a classmate. Each episode is ambitiously shot in one take.
Speaking to The Independent in March about the difficulty of shooting each episode in one take, director Philip Barantini said: “It was quite difficult, but it was fun as well. It was meticulously planned.
“[Tech rehearsals] would be an opportunity for the sound team to put the booms where they needed to be. And, we had all the support and the runners and ADs all dressed in police uniforms in the first episode and teachers in the second episode so they could be on camera and cueing things,” Barantini explained. “It was technically challenging, but a huge collaboration.”
The show has been a massive hit with critics, who have labeled it “harrowing but compelling.”
“It is television in its purest distillation: unflinching, pulse-quickening,” The Independent’s Nick Hilton wrote in a four-star review.
“It caters both to our morbid fascination with crimes at the exotic extremes, and the sense of unravelling a moral knot. The fact that the rest of the series can’t quite match those heights is both a problem and a testament to the impact of that opener,” he added. “Never less than well-made, Adolescence sustains a rawness that makes it a tough but compulsive watch.”
