A keen-eyed reader of The Critic might have observed that we are not the most enthusiastic admirers of Kemi Badenoch, Leader of the Opposition. We have been known to post somewhat critical commentaries on her track record, and on her character, and on her speeches, and on her podcast appearances et cetera. I may have written one or two faintly unflattering pieces myself.
Still, we are fair men and women at Critic towers and if Mrs Badenoch is being treated unjustly, we will say so. (Well, most of the time …)
There are a lot of things that journalists could ask Badenoch about. They could ask about her terrible performances in Parliament, for example, or her bleak prospects. For some reason, though, the question journalists want to ask Badenoch is, “Have you watched Adolescence?”
Yes, the social media moral panic has continued. Members of the British political and media classes are still showing a bizarre inability, or unwillingness, to distinguish between fact and fiction.
At the beginning of this month, Nick Ferrari of LBC responded to Badenoch’s revelation that she had not checked out Adolescence as if she had said that she hadn’t stroked a dog or eaten a slice of pizza. Badenoch, Ferrari fumed, was not “in tune” with the UK. If not watching modish Netflix serials makes one out of tune with the media classes’ impression of the dominant culture of Paddingtopia then I don’t want to be in tune with it.
“Creating policy on a work of fiction, rather than on reality, is the real issue,” said Badenoch. Yes indeed. Still, human-pug hybrid James O’Brien seethed about how “unthinkable” it was that Badenoch had “swerved” the “national conversation”. When the “national conversation” is led by commentators like Mr O’Brien, it is unthinkable indeed that anyone would want to “swerve” it. The idea!
Interviewers just won’t let this go. On BBC Breakfast, Naga Munchetty reacted to Badenoch saying that she had not seen Adolescence as if Munchetty was the Vatican’s scariest cardinal hearing that a Catholic had not been to confession. “Everyone” is talking about Adolescence, claimed Munchetty. Everyone! If you haven’t been talking about Adolescence, reader, then bloody well start. (Talk about Adolescence, I tell you. Why are you not talking about Adolescence? Talk about Adolescence, damn it!)
Clearly, journalists of Britain think that watching Adolescence is some sort of cultural obligation — as if it is the Queen’s funeral and the finale of The Sopranos rolled into one. Still, they keep forgetting what it actually is. Like the Prime Minister, Munchetty made the mistake of calling Adolescence a “documentary”. (Unfortunately, Badenoch picked up the tic and called it a “fictional documentary”.) Should the recurring nature of this mistake not have taught Netflixophiles something about the error of their ways?
To be clear, I am not for one moment suggesting that it is bad to watch Adolescence. Nor, indeed, am I calling Adolescence bad. I haven’t watched it — but not because I think it is unworthy of my time. No, I hate the groupthink that surrounds it. Suggest that I have to watch something — that I have to do so to be “in tune” with Britain, and to join the “national conversation” with the likes of Nick Ferrari and James O’Brien — and I am going to find an old WWF main event to rewatch.
Mrs Badenoch should feel no obligation to watch a Netflix series just because the journalists of Britain have decided that it is the televisual equal to Germinal. I applaud her for not surrendering to their nonsense.
Still — if she has saved time by not watching the TV, she could devote herself to addressing her many, many failures.
