Sobering drama Consent shows how schoolboy banter can turn violent

In 2021, an Ofsted review into sexual abuse in UK schools found that about 90 per cent of girls questioned had been subjected to sexism and had been sent unsolicited explicit content. The report grimly inferred that “the frequency of these harmful sexual behaviours means that some children and young people consider them normal [and . . . ] do not see the point in reporting and challenging this behaviour.”

New standalone Channel 4 “factual drama” Consent draws on this sobering research in a hard-hitting account of the pervasive culture of denigration and harassment among students — and the often inadequate responses to incidents of severe sexual misconduct from schools. Running at less than an hour, the programme is a showcase of concise, urgent storytelling. What it may lack in directorial deftness or narrative texture, it makes up for in the clarity and potency of its message.

The setting is a fictional private school with a proud record of shaping its pupils into “future leaders”. But while privilege, entitlement and classism are evident, the main target of Emma Dennis-Edwards’s writing is the way in which “boys’ banter” can metastasise into hateful, dehumanising attitudes towards girls, and acts of violence.

We see how the straight-A and strait-laced Archie (Tom Victor) becomes so desensitised by aggressive, derogatory chat that he carries out a heinous assault on classmate Natalie (Lashay Anderson) without it even registering as such. Before flirtation turns into violation at Archie’s 18th birthday party, we get a window into the messaging group he shares with mates. In a clever creative choice, these misogynistic and goading texts are reimagined as in-person conversations between the characters, accentuating how shocking these offhand online comments sound when vocalised.

Though convincingly repugnant, the laddish friends are a little too broadly drawn at times. More disquieting is how Archie himself is depicted as less overtly vile, convinced that he could never do any harm even when he is bluntly told otherwise. “I didn’t want that,” says a visibly shell-shocked Natalie. “Yes you did,” comes the reply.

Natalie’s words carry little sway when she reports the incident to the headmaster. He is less concerned by the nature of the allegations than handling matters discreetly and keeping litigious parents off his back. While Archie gets to “chalk it up to experience”, Natalie is left with a lifetime of trauma.

As with so many of the stories on which Consent is based, there is little in the way of resolution here, but there is a notable moment of accountability and contrition involving one of the boys. Like him, we are left not only disgusted and disturbed by what we’ve seen, but with an acute sense of our own complicity.

★★★★☆

On All4 now

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