Astonishing performances turn this Netflix drama about a 13-year-old murder suspect into a devastating watch.

If you’re a parent to a school-age boy, I don’t know whether I should advise you to watch Adolescence (Netflix) immediately, or avoid it at all costs because it will chill your blood. It is a drama so quietly devastating that I won’t forget it for a very long time.

A 13-year-old boy in Yorkshire is arrested on suspicion of murder. The victim is a girl at his school, stabbed to death the night before. Police batter down his door in a dawn raid, and his shell-shocked parents — dad Eddie (Stephen Graham) and mum Manda (Christine Tremarco) — follow him to the police station. “Do you believe me that I’ve not done anything?” the boy, Jamie, desperately asks his dad. “Of course I believe you,” says Eddie. “You’re my son, aren’t you?”

This does not play out as a crime thriller. Nor is it a police procedural, although the first episode very much goes into details of what happens when a minor is arrested for a serious crime (the mug shots, the medical examination, the strip search). It’s not really about knife crime. Rather, it’s an exploration of the pressures on boys today, including the malign influence of social media and some of the nonsense about what it means to be a man. Bullying isn’t new, but being mocked online is a modern horror. And parents, in many cases, are oblivious.