Queenie review: A stylish show about starting over in South London

Calling something “the Black Bridget Jones’s Diary” works fine in an elevator-pitch sort of way. It gives you something of an access point, albeit one that centers the white gaze. Queenie, both the show premiering June 7 on Hulu and the Candice Carty-Williams novel of the same name, has been described that way. Both heroines are messy, sure. Both work in media and hold aspirations to take on more responsibility in their respective roles. And thematically, the show is not dissimilar to Bridget Jones’s Diary, with its overall “embrace mess” theme echoing that Colin Firth line “I like you very much—just as you are.” But labeling our lead Queenie Jenkins the Black version of Bridget is a bit reductive. It flattens her, and she doesn’t deserve that. She’s been through enough, as you’ll see. And it’s that very complexity of Queenie’s experience that makes this drama a compelling watch.

Queenie (Dionne Brown) is a 25-year-old from Brixton in South London. Estranged from her mother, but deeply bonded with her Jamaican immigrant grandparents and aunt who raised her, she resides at the intersection of cultural, generational, and racial influences that she sometimes finds difficult to navigate. However, at the start of this story, her focus seems to be fixed on her job as a social-media assistant at The Daily Reader and her relationship with her boyfriend Tom, who is white. A miscarriage the day of Tom’s mother’s birthday dinner quickly throws Queenie’s life into chaos. By the time her beau’s grandmother is picking apart the features she would and would not want her grandson’s child to inherit from each parent (she says this not knowing about her current medical reality), Queenie’s filter is gone. And with no one, not even her boyfriend, intervening on her behalf, she stands up to the old woman. Following this issue, Tom dismisses her as being “too much,” and initiates a break, siding with his family over his longtime partner like a dweeb.

The rest of the series examines Queenie’s attempts to heal after this heartbreak, and it’s not all super healthy. She has lots of casual sex (sometimes with married dudes), smokes a bit, and gets drunk from time to time (even at work). The friends she consults don’t always give great advice, and sometimes they’re pretty judgmental. And as all of this is going on, we continue to see Queenie struggle through racist abuse at the hands of her boss, co-workers, and even some rando white girl in the club who fully cups her ass without warning. (As we go on this journey with Queenie, we can see why the term “microaggression” has fallen out of favor: it doesn’t encompass the devastating effect these accumulated racial aggressions inflict.) But still, our girl keeps trying to address her issues using the coping skills available to her, and witnessing her resilience is validating. It’s the holistic embrace of this character that allows the show achieves some level of depth, even as other characters are given more shallow treatments.

And that’s really the series’ main flaw: that while Queenie is well-rounded and richly developed, some characters fall flat. One of her romantic interests in particular seems to exist purely to introduce a juicy twist midway through this season (and to be a dick). And maybe it’s okay to give some characters less attention to allow Queenie to reign supreme, but in a show that seems ambitious in many regards, instances of flimsy character development can sometimes dull its shine.