Latest news with #AreYouThereGod
Metro
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Netflix viewers rush to watch 'exceptional' drama based on Judy Blume novel
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video A new teen drama has become one of the most-watched shows in the UK since being released on Netflix a few days ago. Based on bestselling author Judy Blume's 1975 novel of the same name, Forever follows 'the epic love story of two Black teens, Keisha (Lovie Simone) and Justin (Michael Cooper Jr.) as they explore their identities through the awkward and moving journey of being each other's capital-F Firsts'. The 50-year-old tale (from the same writer as coming-of-age classics such as Are You There God? It's Me Margaret) offers a heartfelt, modernised portrayal of first love – and all the complications that come with it. As the two athletes fall hard for each other, life has a way of throwing curveballs the loved-up couple will have to try to weather them together. And just how will this head-over-heels romance impact the rest of their lives? 'Forever, on Netflix, is a warm, fluffy and extremely watchable show that is relatable in every sense of the term,' wrote in its review. Wake up to find news on your TV shows in your inbox every morning with Metro's TV Newsletter. Sign up to our newsletter and then select your show in the link we'll send you so we can get TV news tailored to you. 'While it encompasses all the butterflies and betrayals of first love, 'Forever' also tells a deeper story about the challenges and heartache of raising exceptional Black kids in our fraught modern era,' Entertainment Weekly shared. 'Forever offers something rarely seen on television (or anywhere): a whole, nuanced and exceptional showcase of first love through the eyes of two young Black people,' Variety added. Meanwhile viewers called the show, currently number 3 on Netflix UK, 'phenomenal', 'stellar' and 'captivating'. Before it was released, others also shared their verdict after watching early episodes. 'As someone who has seen all eight episodes: PREPARE TO SWOON,' artan_ayan wrote on X. And many fans are totally hyped for what's to come. 'I just know this show is gonna make me cry,' reignmara said. 'This already looks better than I expected. PREPARE TO BE SICK OF MEEEE,' lacyctrl added about the trailer. 'Y'all im like sobbing i cant believe this,' chaoticblk girl echoed. Many are also praising the show for centring two Black leads in a genre where they are often underrepresented. 'Whether you're a fan of young adult television or not I really need everyone tap into this because it is so rare for us to get authentic black romance stories these days, especially for black teenagers,' poptotheorryy said. 'We're really getting a Black YA romantic series on Netflix? like it's actually happening and not a wishful fancast,' tabbyfaran agreed. Over on YouTube, teeewilliams shared: 'This is IT. THISSSS is what we need — a Black teen romcom.' 'I just realised that is the first time I've seen a young black romance story like this, we really need more of these,' wonderluck-089 commented on YouTube. 'Why did I get emotional watching this?! We hardly see ourselves in this genre, Definitely watching!,' added. 'I NEEDED THIS LIKE YESTERDAY!!! VERY excited for a black teen romance story!'jaya8664 shared. 'It is gratifying to know that, 50 years after its release, the love story at the core of Forever is still resonating with audiences,' told Tudum about seeing the popular 70s novel come to life. 'All the questions we have to sort through — the first time you have sex, your first kiss, the first time you say 'I love you' — it resonated then, and it resonates now,' Mara agreed. Discussing how she brought this love story into the 21st century, Mara told The Telegraph that she had to figure out a way to bring the modern problem of technology on children's innocence and changing position of women into the plot. As a mother to two sons, she found her way in through the vulnerability of 'young Black mean' More Trending 'I find it heartbreaking that before you can talk to them about the birds and the bees, you have to introduce the idea of rape. 'You have to help them navigate all these complexities around language and behaviour, and that's before they've figured out if the girl even likes them. So, once I'd realised that was how we could tell the story, we were off to the races,' she explained. Forever is streaming on Netflix. View More » A version of this article was originally published on May 6, 2025. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: 'Biggest free agent on the planet' causes chaos in WWE Backlash debut MORE: This controversial TV episode 'almost killed the world's biggest show' 15 years ago MORE: Netflix's latest 'charming' film with 'giant heart' is your ultimate weekend watch
Metro
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Netflix series that's gone completely under the radar will leave you 'swooning'
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Prepare yourselves, rom-com lovers – Netflix's new young adult drama promises to make you 'swoon' when it's released this week. Set your calendars, as the eight-episode adaptation of Forever, based on bestselling author Judy Blume's 1975 novel of the same name, is dropping imminently. The 50-year-old tale (from the same writer as coming-of-age classics such as Are You There God? It's Me Margaret) offers a heartfelt, modernised portrayal of first love – and all the complications that come with it. From showrunner Mara Brock Akil, the series follows 'the epic love story of two Black teens, Keisha (Lovie Simone) and Justin (Michael Cooper Jr.) as they explore their identities through the awkward and moving journey of being each other's capital- F Firsts'. As the two athletes fall hard for each other, life has a way of throwing curveballs the loved-up couple will have to try to weather them together. And just how will this head-over-heels romance impact the rest of their lives? Wake up to find news on your TV shows in your inbox every morning with Metro's TV Newsletter. Sign up to our newsletter and then select your show in the link we'll send you so we can get TV news tailored to you. Those who have already seen it are promising great things ahead. 'As someone who has seen all eight episodes: PREPARE TO SWOON,' artan_ayan wrote on X. And many fans are totally hyped for what's to come. 'I just know this show is gonna make me cry,' reignmara said. 'This already looks better than I expected. PREPARE TO BE SICK OF MEEEE,' lacyctrl added about the trailer. 'Y'all im like sobbing i cant believe this,' chaoticblk girl echoed. Many are also praising the show for centring two Black leads in a genre where they are often underrepresented. 'Whether you're a fan of young adult television or not I really need everyone tap into this because it is so rare for us to get authentic black romance stories these days, especially for black teenagers,' poptotheorryy said. 'We're really getting a Black YA romantic series on Netflix? like it's actually happening and not a wishful fancast,' tabbyfaran agreed. Over on YouTube, teeewilliams shared: 'This is IT. THISSSS is what we need — a Black teen romcom.' 'I just realised that is the first time I've seen a young black romance story like this, we really need more of these,' wonderluck-089 commented on YouTube. 'Why did I get emotional watching this?! We hardly see ourselves in this genre, Definitely watching!,' added. 'I NEEDED THIS LIKE YESTERDAY!!! VERY excited for a black teen romance story!'jaya8664 shared. 'It is gratifying to know that, 50 years after its release, the love story at the core of Forever is still resonating with audiences,' told Tudum about seeing the popular 70s novel come to life. 'All the questions we have to sort through — the first time you have sex, your first kiss, the first time you say 'I love you' — it resonated then, and it resonates now,' Mara agreed. Discussing how she brought this love story into the 21st century, Mara told The Telegraph that she had to figure out a way to bring the modern problem of technology on children's innocence and changing position of women into the plot. More Trending As a mother to two sons, she found her way in through the vulnerability of 'young Black mean' 'I find it heartbreaking that before you can talk to them about the birds and the bees, you have to introduce the idea of rape. 'You have to help them navigate all these complexities around language and behaviour, and that's before they've figured out if the girl even likes them. So, once I'd realised that was how we could tell the story, we were off to the races,' she explained. View More » All eight episodes of Forever come out on Netflix on May 8. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: Netflix viewers have just weeks to binge 'steamy' 00s British TV drama MORE: Netflix viewers have just days left to watch dark horror comedy 'better than Scream' MORE: Netflix quietly drops all 6 episodes of 'amazing' thriller making fans cry
Telegraph
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
‘I didn't know how I could make Judy Blume's Forever relevant to today'
Almost every woman who became a teenager in the 1980s and the 1990s remembers the first time they read Judy Blume's 1975 novel Forever... 'I was in middle grade, and we were passing that book around so hard, the pages fell out and had to be paper-clipped together,' says the 54-year-old screenwriter and producer Mara Brock Akil, who was 12 when someone pushed a copy into her hand. It was the early-1980s Midwest and Brock Akil was living with her mother following her parents' divorce. 'Missouri was a pretty conservative place, so the truth about that sort of stuff was harder to find. I went from innocently reading How to Eat Fried Worms to reading about sex with Judy Blume. Boom! All her books – Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret; Blubber – I barrelled through them. She was just hammering us. We all remember her because no one else was writing like her back then.' For the uninitiated, Forever... is the plainly told story of Kath and Michael, two New Jersey high-school seniors who, over several weeks, slowly fumble their way towards having sex for the first time: a satisfactory experience for Michael, considerably less so for Kath, who narrates the book. There have been many YA novels about teenage sex since, but none has the mythic patina and cultural reach of Forever..., a book widely credited with teaching otherwise ignorant and fearful young girls the truth about adulthood. For many, to read it was to feel initiated into a secret club that made them stronger, more curious and less lonely. 'It meant that by the time I sat down to have the chat with my mother about sex, when I was 15, I was ready to go,' says Brock Akil. 'I was like, 'Mum, just give me the birth-control pill!' Forever... enabled me to have that conversation.' On Thursday, Forever... gets its small-screen debut in a dreamy eight-part Netflix series created by Brock Akil, who has relocated the story from 1970s New Jersey to an affluent, sun-addled Los Angeles suburb in 2018. Where the world the novel inhabits is entirely white, the two families at the heart of this version are black, with Kath and Michael reimagined as the outwardly sexually confident Keisha (Lovie Simone) and the more socially sensitive, vastly more privileged Justin (Michael Cooper Jr), who meet at a plush New Year's Eve party and clumsily, giddily, fall in love. The many modern updates include a 'slut-shaming' subplot and a deeper awareness of race, family expectation and class (Keisha is the academically precocious daughter of a single mother; Justin the hemmed-in son of strict and overprotective parents). But the essence remains the same: two young people trying to navigate the confusions and complications of first romance, albeit this time often through the not always helpful technology of mobile phones. Yet Brock Akil – who created the wildly successful and influential Noughties show Girlfriends and is arguably the US's leading chronicler of black American lives on screen – was initially wary about adapting Blume's novel. In the tech-saturated world of today, where a reported one-third of children have seen porn online by the age of 10, very few prepubescents enter their teens with the same innocence as Kath and Michael. 'When Judy wrote Forever..., kids didn't have any understanding. There was nothing to read or watch,' agrees Brock Akil. 'But you only need to go onto Twitter and you are sexually propositioned immediately. Forever... was written against a backdrop of women's liberation – the birth-control pill had become this big new thing and, for the first time, women could explore their hearts and bodies, and know they weren't endangering their future. I knew I could translate the excitement of first love, but I didn't know how I could make it relevant to today.' Her brainwave was to make a virtue of the modern world's more complicated sexual climate, by emphasising both the perils of online communication and the confusions that can stem from the heightened discourse around issues of consent and assault. 'In the book, Kath is the most vulnerable, as a young woman trying to figure out her place in the world. But I'd argue that today it's young black men who are vulnerable. As a mother to boys myself [she has two teenage sons with her producer-director husband, Salim Akil], I find it heartbreaking that before you can talk to them about the birds and the bees, you have to introduce the idea of rape. You have to help them navigate all these complexities around language and behaviour, and that's before they've figured out if the girl even likes them. So, once I'd realised that was how we could tell the story, we were off to the races.' Lately, some of the most dominant tales on screen about young people have been nightmarish, be it the teenage killer at the heart of Adolescence or the sex-and-drugs nihilism of the HBO series Euphoria. Does Brock Akil see Forever... as a way to give back to teenagers a simpler, gooey, young love story? 'Ah, I love that idea! And while I recognise there are some very harrowing challenges in society right now, most people are not having those extreme experiences, right? As a writer, I like to show people's lives as they really are. One of the most radical things you can do today is write a young black male character who is simply a little unsure of what he wants.' Brock Akil has built a career on exploring precisely these everyday nuances. She created Girlfriends in 2000 in response to Sex and the City, because, as she has said many times before, 'on that show, black people had no seat at the table'. Her series – which focused on the chaotic, loving, up-and-down friendships between four black women and has influenced TV shows that explore black lives in relative fullness, such as I May Destroy You – not only broke with the prevailing tradition at the time of depicting black characters only in family sitcoms, it dared to show black women as flawed, messy and all too real. 'The producers didn't want [the actress] Tracee Ellis Ross to keep her natural curly hair for her character, Joan Clayton,' says Brock Akil. 'Can you imagine that? They wanted her to blow-dry it straight. But we won that battle, and over the course of the show's eight series, Tracee's curly hair became a real advert for natural hair.' Girlfriends also became an advert for the glorious reality of black women's sex lives, as something ordinary, untidy, and often imperfect. 'When I created it, the images of black sexuality on TV were extreme,' says Brock Akil. 'We were either represented as sexless lawyers or as marginalised sexually promiscuous women. So with Girlfriends the idea was very much to say, 'We black women are not just here for the pleasure of men'.' 'That idea of the strong black woman,' she says, 'it's a lie that I've been exploring through all of my work, because if you adopt that rigid concept of yourself, it leaves you no room for the full complexity of who we are.' Brock Akil sees a through-line between that show and her version of Forever... 'With Keisha, I wanted to create a black woman who is clever, but who also makes mistakes. She's a girl trying to figure it out – and what better image for young women is there than that?' Forever comes to Netflix on Thursday 8 May
