Stephen Graham’s Scouse accent is a red herring

You know if Stephen Graham is starring in something, he’s going to have a Scouse accent. It’s just the law. Normally he’s one of the only ones in the show with a Scouse accent, but as he dominates in the new Netflix show Adolescence the sense of place is a bit more confusing. The new show by Graham and co-writer Jack Thorne, directed by Boiling Point’s Philip Barantini, is a symphony of different UK accents and the show never actually explicitly says where it is set. However, the creators behind Adolescence on Netflix have explained where the show is set – sort of.

Here’s what you need to know if you were as confused as I was hearing Scouse, London and north west / Yorkshire accents in almost equal measure.

It was all to do with Owen Cooper

Obviously, Adolescence was put together by Stephen Graham – famously one of Liverpool’s finest Scouse exports. With Stephen Graham writing, starring and producing the show – and with the knowledge he never really acts without a Scouse accent – you’d default assume Adolescence was in Liverpool. His wife in the show, played by Christine Tremarco, is also a Scouser. But in episode four, both of them discuss that they’re not moving back to Liverpool.

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Ashley Walters, famous for his work in Top Boy, hails from Peckham. When the show moves to the school, the accents are again all over the place.

Adolescence Netflix real stories

The show was shot in Pontefract in North Wales, the whole thing – including a purpose built police station set for the moving camera and the one-shot style of the episodes. Because this was the first ever professional acting role for Owen Cooper, Netflix chose to have Adolescence set near this location to accommodate him. And it’s clearly paid off, because he’s truly been the breakout star at the centre of Adolescence’s acclaim.

Pontefract was chosen as the central location because Owen Cooper hails from Warrington.

“We knew it was going to be set somewhere in the north of England,” says director Philip Barantini to Time Out, “and we also knew it would be from somewhere around wherever our Jamie was from, because it would have been unfair to make him do an accent.”

The town setting was set to be South Elmsall, just outside of Wakefield. The school was filmed in Sheffield.