
Archie Johnson appears to be a pleasant child at first glance, the peak of what the ideal sixth grader should look like.
Archie divides his time between his huge, airy mansion in an upscale suburb and his top-ranking private school, the son of two high-flying, well-to-do business people.
Archie, like his parents, seemed destined to be an overachiever, with a spot on the school rugby team, A* grades, and an Oxbridge offer to boot. He’s humble and quiet, considerably less flamboyant and laddish than some of his boisterous peers.
So when Natalie, a fellow student with whom Archie has had a flirty connection, accuses him of rape after his 18th birthday party, everyone is taken aback.
Archie was supposed to be rejecting the nasty boy culture that had infiltrated his best mates, saying he ‘felt like an alien’ in comparison to other pupils. Could he truly be capable of such a thing?
This experience of being caught off guard is what writer Emma Dennis-Edwards wanted to convey in her controversial new one-off play, Consent.
‘I wanted the audience to question what a perpetrator looks like,’ she tells Metro.co.uk. ‘I find this culture of misogyny in young men really concerning, and I wanted to show how that group mentality can really filter through.’
While Archie and Natalie’s narrative is totally made up, some of the details we see on television are quite close to the testimony on the site. Archie and his buddies use a disgusting ‘points’ system to videotape and exchange material of ladies they’ve slept with. Emma recalls hearing stories from teenage girls about how their private photos were released online without their permission when they were underage.
‘We’ve talked about incel culture and misogyny and how that affects society in general, but the manifestation of that in schools felt like something I really wanted to explore,’ explains the writer.
‘I guess this sort of culture is very much exacerbated amongst students now, because of social media. I think it’s bigger and more intrusive, which I wanted to show with the Sluts and Stuff WhatsApp group. I wanted to show how this affected Archie’s behaviour, because this misogyny is just so deeply entrenched in how he and his friends talked to each other.’
Emma does not shy away from using extreme language, even trying to maintain more unsettling features of WhatsApp discussions when executives wanted to tone them down. Throughout the film, explicit sexual obscenities are used: in the first scene, Raffs advises Archie to’shut Natalie up’ by’shoving his d*** in her gob’ or ‘riding her p***y bareback.’
‘I understood why there was concern,’ she says. ‘I mean, the original title of the drama was Sluts and Stuff. I get why that had to be changed.
‘It’s really important that in the storytelling, the characters I created were truthful. Although there was controversy around some of the language, these are things that we found regularly in our research. I felt like we shouldn’t shy away from it, like we don’t shy away from anything in the drama.’
What’s even more unsettling is that Archie’s enormous riches and power completely erase Natalie’s charge.
Natalie is powerless in the face of the headmaster’s desperate attempt to keep the story out of the news, as well as Archie’s parents’ threat to withdraw their son from school.
This more unusual interaction between a private school and its pupils was inspired by Emma’s own real-life experience as a teacher to the extremely rich in the London borough of Wandsworth.
‘As someone from a working-class background, I had never met a person from a private school until I was around 18,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t really aware of the “client” relationship these private schools have with the parents that sent their kids there.
‘The culture of the client relationship was really interesting, and how you provide a service, is quite different. That sector is not just to learn. You’re not just paying for the best education. You’re paying for connections and experiences within that school.
‘It’s the kind of world experiences that money does buy you, that I found really interesting as a tutor.’
With just 7% of the UK population attending private school, Emma felt it was necessary to represent Natalie as a Black, working-class girl who attends Burlingdale on a scholarship. She acts as a cypher allowing the audience to peer into a world unfamiliar to her and most of us.

Emma is a Black woman herself, and she was quick to point out that Natalie’s humble beginnings, calling out a culture that has deliberately worked to exclude her, were the driving factor behind the school’s easy dismissing of her claims.
Even Natalie’s best friend (and Archie’s twin sister), decides not to believe her, describing the rape as a ‘misunderstanding’.
‘I included the racial dynamic because when I was researching the piece, this was quite a big part of it,’ Emma explains. ‘It’s really interesting as a lot of these schools are actually quite international. Our prime minister went to one of these schools.
‘I wanted to emphasise it’s because of the difference of class as to why Natalie isn’t believed, and how we are all responsible for upholding patriarchy and misogyny.

‘It was important to show Archie’s sister as a perpetrator of this violence against women.
‘It’s why we don’t show the video Archie recorded until the very end. I want the audience to really ask themselves if they believe women.’
Despite the dismal subject matter, Emma is relieved that Consent will finally be published to the public, and she thinks it will inspire important conversation and debate about sexism in schools.
‘We need to really tackle this stuff head on,’ she says.
‘Ultimately, it shows how we need greater discussion about consent in sex education in schools, and we need to be discussing this with children way, way sooner.
‘By reading Everyone’s Invited, I was heartened to see so many young women are now able to articulate what happened to them, and acknowledge that wasn’t okay.
‘People are a lot more ready to say: “I won’t be spoken to like that” or “the way boys are doing this is making me really uncomfortable.”
‘I am heartened by the fact that younger women are speaking up in a way I didn’t feel like I could.’
Consent airs tonight at 10pm on Channel 4.