BBC Offended That Politician Doesn't Want To Watch a TV Show

A totally bonkers interview in which BBC presenters interrogate a politician because she hasn’t watched a TV show… pic.twitter.com/qXWBOYXOV5

— Andrew Doyle (@andrewdoyle_com) April 10, 2025

“Have you seen ‘Adolescence’?” Yes, Mein Fuhrer: but I’m starting to wish I hadn’t. Oh, to inhabit the world of Kemi Badenoch, who innocently went on BBC Breakfast imagining they’d talk solely about tariffs, China or thermonuclear war – the sooner it comes, the better – but was invited to review the telly instead.

“Have you watched ‘Adolescence’ yet?” asked Charlie Stayt. The “yet” was impatient, as if Charlie were tapping a baseball bat in his hand. Kemi is notorious for not yet watching the TV show everyone who works in TV is talking about – and when she replied that she still hadn’t and “probably won’t”, co-host Naga Munchetty looked tempted to call Prevent.

“It’s prompting conversations about toxic masculinity,” she said, plus “smartphone use… Why do you not want to know what people are talking about?”

“All important issues”, replied Kemi. “But in the same way I don’t need to watch ‘Casualty’ to know what’s going on in the NHS, I don’t need to watch a specific Netflix drama to understand what’s going on.” BBC Breakfast’s viewers sat up in their hospital beds. Finally: someone speaks for reality! The only thing Kemi got wrong is that ‘Casualty’ has little to do with the NHS any more. Or medicine. I think it’s mostly about sex.

More here: Kemi Badenoch is right about Adolescence.

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.