A couple of years ago, Judy Blume noted that book banning was not only undergoing a resurgence in the US, but was at that point “much worse” than she had noticed during the 1980s. Blume is one to know: her 1975 novel Forever..., about teenage sex and desire, continues to be banned by school districts and libraries, as repression and censorship gallop on at a pace. This Netflix adaptation of Blume’s novel, which loses the ellipsis, is not only timely but important: through it, the story continues to be told, even if it is in a different medium.
This eight-part series, created by Girlfriends showrunner Mara Brock Akil, is sensitive and winningly sweet, while still managing to maintain its defiance and bite. It doesn’t so much update its source material as treat the novel as loose inspiration: details are shuffled around, extrapolated, nudged to the front and pushed to the back. But the spirit of it is intact. The central love story is now between two black students, Justin (Michael Cooper Jr) and Keisha (Lovie Simone) and set in Los Angeles, rather than New Jersey. It sets the action in 2018, neatly avoiding the enormously disruptive effects of the pandemic on teen life, while maintaining the dominance of smartphones, which it writes into the story with ease and authenticity.
