Queenie Review: A Chaotic, Heartfelt Story About Coming of Age In South London

Book adaptations are notoriously difficult things. Is it better for a TV series to be more technically faithful to the letter of the novel or is it more important to be true to the spirit of the story it’s trying to tell?  Hulu’s Queenie finds a balance between the two, shifting some of the story beats of Candice Carty-Williams‘s 2019 bestseller without losing its heart.

The original novel was dubbed the “Black Bridget Jones’s Diary,” and while that comparison is generally apt — there are a lot of uncomfortable situations, awkward cringe moments, and even an inappropriate bunny costume — but it’s frank discussions of sex, dating, and friendship makes Queenie feel much more like contemporary series like Insecure, Fleabag, or Sex and the City.

However you choose to describe the series, the story’s deft exploration of modern life for a twentysomething young woman of color in South London feels fresher and more necessary than ever.

The series follows the story of Queenie Jenkins (Dionne Brown), a twenty-five-year-old Black woman living in South London. Estranged from her mother but close to her immigrant grandparents and the aunt who raised her, her life is made of an extensive cross-section of generational, racial, and class intersections. 

She’s got an entry-level job at a newspaper where her ambitions of becoming something more than a social media assistant seem to be going nowhere. (Her boss is uninterested in her pitches about more serious social issues and encourages her to essentially go back to making memes.)

Her three-year relationship with Tom (Jon Pointing), who is white, hits a roadblock when he refuses to speak out against a racist comment from his grandmother about the children they might one day produce, and an unexpected miscarriage is just another item on her list of traumas to bear.

Queenie’s voiceover narration throughout all of this is genuinely hilarious: biting, sharp-witted, and surprisingly vulnerable. In the wake of her break up with Tom, she’s forced to move out of the apartment they were meant to share and attempts to battle her heartbreak with classic coping and frequently unhealthy mechanisms, from ill-advised hookups with suspect men to drinking too much and slacking off at work.

In truth, we’ve seen a lot of the story beats of Queenie before: A self-doubting, awkward heroine, a bad break-up, a self-doubting, often self-destructive spiral, a squad of diverse supportive friends. But told through the lens of a young Black woman, these familiar narrative elements take on new and meaningful nuance. 

The story is firmly rooted in the Black British experience in large and small ways. We see Queenie forced to show her security badge regularly at work, despite the fact that she’s prominently featured on the company’s diversity poster. Several of her would-be hookups are almost shockingly upfront about their desire to fetishize her. And when there’s a work dispute, it’s a white colleague whose argument is automatically believed. 

Queenie’s experiences are uniquely tied to her Blackness in a way we rarely get the opportunity to see play out in comedies such as this one, and this perspective adds unique layers and nuances to the standard twentysomething coming-of-age plot. And narrative voiceovers give us access to Queenie’s innermost thoughts — about everything from the invasiveness of a gynecological exam to the unspoken frustrations of interacting with her boyfriend’s white family. 

Brown’s performance is both charming and complicated, embracing Queenie’s spiky, occasionally self-destructive edges without losing any of her warmth or humor. Her presence is commanding throughout, and even at Queenie’s lowest moments, it’s impossible to look away from her. (Though you might have to do so through your fingers at various points. The cringe is real sometimes, y’all.) 

But although the series supporting cast is equally strong, Queenie’s squad of secondary characters aren’t fleshed out much beyond the stereotypical roles they plan in our heroine’s life.

There’s the girlboss CEO at her office (Sally Phillips), who seems content to make Queenie little more than the face of their DEI efforts. The work bestie  (Tilly Keeper) who often covers for her when she’s late or hungover. The overachieving mate from university (Elisha Applebaum) who ruthlessly tries to micromanage everyone’s lives. The handsome friend (Samuel Adewunmi) that is secretly in love with her. 

Thankfully, Queenie’s relationship with her family fares better, and her scenes with her Jamaican immigrant grandmother (Llewella Gideon) and grandfather (Joseph Marcell)  offer some of the show’s most heartwarming moments. 

But at the end of the day, this is Queenie’s story, and how you feel about the show will ultimately depend on how you feel about her journey.

As a character, she’s remarkably self-aware, which tracks with the series’ updated Gen Z feel. After all, the language of therapy, self-care and healing has long been coopted by the world of social media, and Queenie’s more than capable of acknowledging her emotional and mental issues.

In many ways, her trauma is an excuse for her worst choices, and Queenie is at its best when it forces its heroine to confront and challenges her to change those patterns.

Whether or not she is ultimately successful in doing so is a question only the series itself can answer, but viewers will find themselves rooting for — sometimes in spite of themselves — every step of the way. 

What did you think of Queenie? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Queenie is currently streaming on Hulu. 

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