Back in March of 2025, Netflix’s Adolescence punched onto our screens. The drama hit a cultural nerve both nationally and globally, that brought discussion of the all-too-real issues of knife crime, online misogyny and gender-based violence to a simmering head.
The four-part miniseries quickly became a defining drama of 2025, proceeding to sweep the Emmy Awards and skyrocket to Netflix’s second most-watched series, all while sparking debate online.
Seven months after its release, as we begin to move into 2026, the legacy of Adolescence remains just as poignant.
Co-writer and star of Adolescence Stephen Graham is determined not to let the dust settle on its timely message, as he steps off-screen and onto the page to undertake a new book, Letters to Our Sons.
Both the process of filming Adolescence and the ‘huge impact’ that it had, exposed a ‘greater need for communication between fathers and sons’, writes Graham, in a short blurb introducing the book, launched in partnership with psychologist Orly Klein. It will be published by Bloomsbury in October 2026.
The ‘era-defining’ project aims to compile a series of ‘honest, powerful and moving’ letters, written from fathers to their sons in a bid to ‘continue the conversation’ on toxic masculinity that Adolescence ignited.
‘After the huge impact of Adolescence, I realised there was a greater need for communication between fathers and sons.’ – Stephen Graham
In 2024, police declared that the prevalence of violence against women and girls in the UK had reached the point of a ‘national emergency’,with over 2 million women every year estimated to be the victims of violence perpetrated by men. Police chiefs linked a rise in cases to online radicalisation, especially of young men, by figures like Andrew Tate. Even more disturbingly, data also showed that the age of perpetrators of gender-based violence is getting younger, with 55.6% of total offences of child sexual abuse and exploitation being committed by children.
Despite the fact that 97% of the perpetrators of sexual offences were male in the year ending December 2023, male violence against women and girls is often viewed as a ‘women’s issue’. Numerous researchers, survivors, activist groups and charities have long been calling for men and boys to start talking about the issue.
American author and speaker Jackson Katz is one of the key figures of the movement, most famous for his 2012 Ted Talk, Violence against women – it’s a men’s issue. Katz is a pioneer of changing the culture from the inside, running productive workshops and programs for male-dominated organisations, with a focus on positive role models, and making men aware of their role in challenging the everyday misogyny that lays the groundwork for gender-based violence.
In his recent book Every Man: Why Violence Against Women Is a Men’s Issue Katz offers an informative and conversational introduction to the movement, stressing that this change has to come from men being brave enough to speak out.
‘We need more men with the guts, with the courage, with the strength, with the moral integrity to break our complicit silence and challenge each other and stand with women and not against them.’ – Jackson Katz
TEDxFiDiWomen, www.ted.com. November 2012
It’s no coincidence that Katz’s most recent project comes in book form, as will Graham’s Letters. There’s now a consciousness that much of the hateful rhetoric contributing to this violence is reaching young boys online, when in fact, fathers and male role models should be the ones talking to young men and boys about their place in the world.
In Adolescence, it’s clear that Jamie, the drama’s 13-year-old protagonist and the murderer of his classmate Katie, has been heavily influenced by the ‘manosphere’ online, whilst simultaneously lacking an open communication with his father Eddie (Graham), who laments at the end of the series that he ‘could have done better’.
With a generation of young men and boys facing an onslaught of negative, hateful rhetoric online, left feeling isolated, angry and confused, books like ‘Letters to Our Sons’ are more crucial than ever. This project ‘has the potential to be a genuine social and cultural movement that goes beyond the book itself. Letters to Our Sons is going to help, and possibly save, lives’ said Katy Follian, Head of Bloomsbury General. For each letter published, donations will be made to charities MANUP? and Dad La Soul, that support young men’s mental health.
As we move forward through the increasingly terrifying modern world, we must move forward together in kindness and understanding. Sometimes that starts with something as simple as a letter.
Do you know a father, of any age or walk of life, who could use this opportunity to write to their son about what it means to be a man? Applications for the project are open from now until the 12th of January 2026. Details can be found at www.letterstooursons.co.uk.
About the author
