When Channel 4’s new rape culture drama Consent popped up on Tarana Choudhury’s TV recommendations on Saturday night, she knew it was going to be a tough watch.
Even still, the mother-of-three was horrified by what she saw. Teens masturbating together to violent porn before parties; schoolboys peer-pressuring each other into filming their sexual encounters; and girls being slut-shamed after being sexually assaulted were among the many distressing and uncomfortable moments in the 50-minute show. And the character at the centre of it all: private school ‘golden boy’ Archie, who films himself having sex with his classmate Natalie while she is almost comatose from alcohol, before sharing the footage on a WhatsApp group for his male friends to see.
Sitting with her husband on the sofa, Choudhury, 52, felt sick to her stomach to think their daughter Zaara, 16, could be going through such scenarios at the parties she’s been invited to this half term. “I found it really alarming, to be honest,” she says. “You can almost see who’s who [in the show] within [Zaara’s and her sister Tamara’s, 19] friendship groups. The moment I decided both my girls need to watch it is when Natalie and her friend are getting ready and doing their own little videos. Having two daughters, I see this; this is literally what they do when they’re getting ready. Taking videos, doing selfies to music... this is very real. It actually happens.”
Zaara, a Year 12 student, sat down to watch the programme the following evening and Choudhury says the most shocking part of her reaction was that it wasn’t shocking at all. “It was almost too believable — that’s what made it really horrifying,” says Zaara, listing some of the worrying number of scenes that rang true including rude comments from boys as girls walk past at parties and porn culture clouding their minds. “It’s not often as a teenager you see a show that feels that real. The characters in Euphoria and Gossip Girl don’t really feel like the teenagers I see and know — the characters in Consent really did.”
Zaara and her mother are far from alone in finding themselves having rather more candid conversations around the dinner table this half term. At state and private schools up and down the country, it’s the same question dominating almost every parent’s WhatsApp groups: have you seen Consent yet? Have you spoken to your kids about it? And — more pressingly — did you have any idea things were this bad?
For the vast majority of parents, the answer to that final question seems to be a whispered but resounding no. The issue of a shockingly widespread ‘rape culture’ in schools has been a difficult talking point among parents and teachers for some time now, thanks to a litany of anonymous testimonies published on a website called Everyone’s invited. The site was set up in the wake of Sarah Everard’s death in March 2021 and the initial fallout was both necessary and deeply alarming: victims feeling empowered to report and sometimes name their attackers on apps like Whisper for the first time; top London’s schools reporting their own pupils to police; frightened parents hiring criminal lawyers in a bid to clear their sons’ names.
Parents and child experts have since warned of a “dangerous” backlash against boys, leaving many lost, insecure and traumatised, but others say the initial explosion of allegations was an inevitable outcome of such a long-awaited movement. Reassuringly, the two years since then have seen a shift towards a different focus: that of education. Charities such as Tender have launched healthy relationship workshops with students across the capital and Mayor of London Sadiq Khan recently announced £1 million of new funding for anti-sexism workshops in the city’s secondary schools — a move particularly welcomed by teachers and parents, given the rise of toxic masculine ‘icon’ Andrew Tate. Courses educating teachers on how to tackle Tate’s extremist views and ‘alpha’ male teachings have reportedly been selling out, fast.
For parents of teenagers, the main outcome of this cultural shift has been an opportunity to talk: most will have struggled not to discuss at least some aspect of this so-called ‘rape culture’ with their teenagers over the last 24 months. Many say they feel enabled and indeed obligated to have more open conversations at home — and that this latest Channel 4 show marks another watershed moment: what 18 months ago might have been a tentative “how are those new sex education workshops at school?” has become “what exactly is it about Andrew Tate that you resonate with?”, “you know you can tell me if someone ever tries to pressure you into something” and “you seem quiet after that party — is everything OK?”. Thanks to the show’s crude insights into boys’ WhatsApp groups and post-GCSE parties, some parents say they feel they have the language and references to use with their teenagers for the first time.
Channel 4’s show was inspired by real events — writer Emma Dennis-Edwards, who plays Natalie’s mother in the show, spent a lot of time reading the anonymous testimonies on Everyone’s Invited — and many of the scenes are far from subtle, but neither is the reality. Executive producer Aysha Rafaele says adults’ reaction tends to be “Oh my God, [those text messages] are horrific”. “When a young person sees it they go: ‘Oh, it’s much worse than that in reality’” — which is probably a sign they’ve got the balance just right. “Young people are saying it very much reflects their experiences.”
Rafaele says she’s been approached about showing the drama in schools to children as young as 14. Not all parents agree it’s appropriate, but she believes the lessons in it are important: “If it makes once boy think ‘is this really consent?’ [when they watch the programme] then that will be a good outcome”. Zaara agrees, saying the show feels “more effective” than sex education lessons. She says a video comparing consenting to sex to consenting to tea has been doing the rounds among her age-group for years, “but it’s too light-hearted”.
Zaara says many of the themes in Consent particularly resonated with her and her friends. Later in the show, Archie is seen going on to win an award at the school’s end-of-year prize-giving, while his alleged victim, Natalie, ends up leaving the school — a scenario Zaara says didn’t surprise her, sadly, given her observing of how state and private schools have addressed such matters over recent years.
Dennis-Edwards says this was a deliberate decision, given how many of the allegations on Everyone’s Invited concerned some of the country’s leading private institutions. At the same time, they hope the majority of Consent’s themes will resonate with teens at all schools. “It’s less about individual stories, anyway,” says Rafaele. “More a collective cry.” She points out the Ofsted figure quoted at the end of the show: that 59 per cent of girls and young women aged 13-21 say they have experienced sexual harassment at school or college. “If those are true then there are a lot of young women who are experiencing a lot of sh*t, from minor incidents of harassment to rape. The sheer force of the numbers tells you it’s a real problem that’s out there.”
Rafaele and Dennis-Edwards “tortured” themselves over the ending, which offers the character Natalie some agency as a victim. Archie’s friend, Kyle, eventually decides to send her the since-deleted video Archie took having sex with her as evidence, and she’s later heard reporting the incident to police (we don’t find out if he’s ever found guilty). It might not be a common conclusion for most of these cases — just one per cent of rapes recorded by police reportedly result in a charge, let alone a conviction — but “what are we saying if there isn’t a commupence at the end? What does that say to girls?” asks Rafaele. She and her colleagues decided that it was only right to show the serious consequences of what can happen if you don’t get consent, especially in a world in which misogynist figures like Tate can be seen telling boys to “boom in [their girlfriend’s] face and grip her by the neck.”
Sandra Paul, one of London’s top criminal lawyers with firm Kingsley Napley, believes this was the right ending to choose. After Everyone’s Invited first exploded, her cases of this nature skyrocketed by more than 50 per cent. That’s “steadied” to four or five times a month now, but she continues to see the consequences of what can happen to boys if they are (rightly or wrongly) accused. “The boys I see are broken, upset, scared beyond their wits,” she says in a nod to Archie’s fearful expression when he finds out he’s been accused of rape.
The main difference between Paul’s cases and Channel 4’s fictional scenario is that the majority of assaults she sees are more “nuanced”. “Anybody [in Archie’s position] would have recognised that Natalie was too drunk,” says Paul of the scene where Archie carries a passed-out Natalie up the stairs to have sex with her. “Most of the boys who ask me for help say their genuine judgement was that the girl had consented. None describe carrying someone up the stairs.”
Paul believes Consent was a “missed opportunity” to show the subtle grey areas of such cases. She finds it “scary” to think shows like Consent might be shown in schools as “it might suggest that the barometer [for consent] is simply a girl being awake”. But Deana Puccio, a former sex crimes prosecutor from New York, strongly disagrees. As a mother of teenagers and co-founder of The RAP Project, which holds workshops about rape and sexual assault at many of the schools named by Everyone’s Invited, she thinks the general nuance of the show and its characters were exactly what made it so effective. Archie is portrayed as a “decent boy” compared to his friends, and for most of the show, viewers are left wondering what took place in the bedroom between him and Natalie. “Up until the video is released, you’re thinking: ‘What did happen?’” she says. “Up until the very end it’s another story of a young woman silenced by a more (financially) powerful family; the girl leaving the the boy staying — that’s not uncommon.”
In the show, Archie’s parents go out for the evening, leaving him and his sister to host the party without adult supervision. Puccio says she’s aware of parents who still go out for the evening when their teenagers host gatherings — which is why it is a topic she addresses in presentations she delivers to parents. “I try not to lecture parents, but I do give them my personal experience as a parent: that there should be a repsonsible adult at the party; that there should be one entrance and exit. Do you have a game-plan in case things go wrong? Are you allowing drinking? How will you monitor it? Are you going going to let other parents know you’re allowing it? How are all these kids getting home? As a legally repsonsible adult, how are you going to get them home if one passes out?” Paul says alcohol is involved in roughly 60 per cent of the sexual assault cases she sees among school-age children.
Natalie might be the one to pass out from alcohol in this particular show, but Archie clearly also consumes a lot of alcohol at the party, telling her “I was drunker that you” in a particularly heated exchange post-assault. Naturally, he is painted as the villain of the show, but there are also moments viewers find themselves empathising with him too. “This has destroyed him,” his twin sister is seen angrily whispering to a friend in the library in the days after the allegation. Dennis-Edwards says this nuance was important: she originally wrote Consent from Natalie’s perspective, but later decided Archie’s view was important, too. “There’s an idea of what a perpetrator looks like and a victim looks like,” says Rafaele “Whereas Archie is nice, intelligency boy from a good family, for all intents and purposes.”
Paul says she feels for teenage boys today, scared of being labelled as predators and being put off relationships altogether. “It’s really difficult: that anticipation, as a boy, that you will demonstrate you are interested in someone; but the knowledge that there are risks involved if you do demonstrate that you are interested — and that if you haven’t been given the words to do that and keep yourself safe, you are at risk,” she says.
Child psychotherapist Julie Lynn-Evans agrees that some boys lives are being “destroyed” by this “excessive” cultural shift. Her clients are now “exclusively” boys who have been punished, cancelled and even expelled for what she describes as little more than inexperienced “teenage fumbling”. Some, she says, are suicidal. “I used to worry about my daughter [17],” says mother-of-two Papia Chakraborty, 51, from north-east London. “Now I worry just as much about my son [19].... to be falsely accused and have his life ruined is definitely more of a worry these days.”
Paul and Lynn-Evans agree that greater support is needed for boys as well as girls — and not just those who are falsely accused, but innocent boys who are terrified of being caught in the crossfire. “Being a boy definitely feels like a lot of pressure... It feels like there are certain things that girls can get away with that boys can’t anymore, like making a sexual comment or joke,” says east London sixth form student Marcus*, 16. He says the culture post-Everyone’s Invited is a large part of the reason he doesn’t drink very much alcohol. “It’s definitely made me more nervous”.
Many say boys acting more cautiously can only be a good thing; girls have been the ones having to adapt their behaviour for too long and relatable examples like Consent are one of the only ways of changing the culture. Others believe we need to be careful of “petrifying” young people. Paul says that rather than scaring them with TV shows like this at the age of 11 or 13, we should be starting much earlier, with everything from Tender workshops on the language in relationships to teaching ptimary-age children they can fist-pump instead of hugging if they want, “because it’s their choice what they do with their bodies”.
Whether schools decide to show it in classrooms or not will be up to staff and parents, but one thing’s for sure: if Rafaele and her team created Consent to “provoke conversation” as she says they did, they’ve certainly delivered on that front.
