Erin Doherty as Briony Ariston looking scared in Adolescence
By
Guy Howie
Published 17 minutes ago
After joining ScreenRant in January 2025, Guy became a Senior Features Writer in March of the same year, and now specializes in features about classic TV shows. With several years' experience writing for and editing TV, film and music publications, his areas of expertise include a wide range of genres, from comedies, animated series, and crime dramas, to Westerns and political thrillers.
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Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne’s drama miniseries Adolescence has set a new benchmark for television in the streaming era. Exquisitely written, beautifully acted, and shot with the kind of skill and technical precision that would have bowled even Alfred Hitchcock over, the Netflix show has done Britain proud like few others before it.
Anyone still wondering why the reviews for Adolescence have been so good simply has to go and watch it. The series itself has all the answers you need. Having collected every Emmy in sight back in September, this uniquely affecting drama will likely be topping various annual polls for the best TV shows of 2025 in the coming weeks.
It’s arguably in the conversation for the best British TV show of all time, too. Adolescence isn’t alone in this conversation, though. In fact, there are a handful of other British drama shows that actually outdo Adolescence in certain respects. These historically superlative series are few and far between, but they’ll always be worth returning to.
The Wednesday Play
1964–1970
Cathy crying in Cathy Come Home
This landmark anthology series took the 1950s model of auteur stage drama and turned it into a prototype for prestige television. The Wednesday Play at its best counted the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre and Ivan Turgenev among its direct literary inspirations, Noël Coward and Alan Seymour among its writers, and Philip Saville and Ken Loach among its directors.
Stephen Graham’s hero Loach directed what are probably the two most famous episodes of the series, kitchen sink dramas Cathy Come Home and Up the Junction. Cathy Come Home had a similar social impact to Adolescence when it aired, raising mass awareness of the issue it addresses among politicians, charities, and the public at large.
Meanwhile, episodes such as Fable and The War Game provoked widespread controversy. The former was a radical protest against South African apartheid aimed at a white audience, and the latter was the first TV show to present a realistic portrayal of a nuclear holocaust.
The Wednesday Play was canceled and replaced by a similar series in 1970 due to declining ratings. Nevertheless, its legacy as possibly the most pioneering British TV show of all time remains intact.
Boys From The Blackstuff
1982
Bernard Hill as Yosser Hughes in Boys From The Blackstuff (1982)
A direct descendent of The Wednesday Play, Alan Bleasdale’s Boys from the Blackstuff modernized the kitchen sink drama format for the 1980s, but maintained its social-realist essence. It features Bernard Hill’s best TV performance, as an unemployed tarmac layer in Liverpool during Thatcher’s first term as British Prime Minister.
The miniseries is intensely political, but it doesn’t preach its politics in didactic fashion. It allows them to emerge naturally during the course of all-too-real events within the plot. Boys from the Blackstuff is a harrowing portrayal of those on the sharp end of capitalism, as well as a profound examination of masculinity that’s at least the equal of Adolescence.
A Very British Coup
1988
Ray McNally and Keith Allen in A Very British Coup
Much like the true story behind The Crown season 3 episode entitled “The Coup”, A Very British Coup depicts a plot to oust a Labour Prime Minister from the British government by force. This plot is wholly fictional, but it does come terrifyingly close to reality in many respects.
This three-part miniseries is written by another of The Wednesday Play’s alumni, Alan Plater, and stars Ray McAnally in the lead role as British Prime Minister Harry Perkins. Expertly put together, it clearly served as the precursor to Black Mirror episodes with similar themes, such as “The National Anthem” and “The Waldo Moment”.
Talking Heads
1988, 1998, 2020
Alan Bennett, the legendary British writer behind boarding school movie The History Boys first scripted his magnum opus Talking Heads in the late 1980s, before returning to it a decade later, and again in 2019. Each episode of the show is a single dramatic monologue spoken directly to the camera, by a character Bennett has created.
This form of TV drama might not be to everyone’s taste, but it’s worth sampling at least one of the monologues, which are acted out by various greats of British acting. The experience will almost certainly be very different from what it sounds like.
The manner in which Bennett’s writing invokes real voices from everyday life, and immerses us in the story world of his characters wholly from their point of view, is truly extraordinary. TV series don’t get more imaginative – or more British – than this one.
Pride and Prejudice
1995
Jannifer Ehle and Colin Firth in BBC's Pride and Prejudice
The best of Pride and Prejudice’s many screen adaptations is surely the greatest BBC period drama of all time. Aside from Colin Firth’s iconic turn as the original Mr. Darcy (rather than his Bridget Jones character), the miniseries is staged and costumed with a rare blend of taste and historical accuracy.
This Pride and Prejudice features an array of outstanding performances in addition to Firth’s, too. Alison Steadman is hilariously hysterical as Mrs. Bennet, and David Bamber steals multiple scenes as Mr. William Collins. Most of all, though, it’s Jennifer Ehle’s underrated Elizabeth Bennet that holds the whole thing together.
Adolescence may have wowed audiences around the world this year, but it still has some way to go before it steals the hearts of an entire generation the way Pride and Prejudice did 30 years ago. Nevertheless, these two vastly different shows are both undisputed greats of their time, and will both be considered all-time British classics in the future.
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17 minutes ago
Let us know your thoughts on which could be even better than Adolescence.
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