'Queenie' is TV Royalty
Sometimes, the more specific something is, the more universal it becomes. Such is the case with the Onyx Collective’s new series, Queenie, streaming on Hulu. The eight-episode series, based on the 2019 novel of the same name by Candice Carty-Williams, follows 25-year-old Queenie (Dionne Brown) during a tumultuous year of her life.
Queenie is a Black woman of Jamaican descent living in South London. She’s got an entry-level job at a newspaper where her boss often dismisses her ideas. “Keep doing what you’re meant to be doing. You’re social media assistant for a reason. That you are good at,” Gina (Sally Phillips) tells her. She’s juggling a very opinionated extended family and three very different best friends in: the hilariously outspoken friend from birth, Kyazike (Bellah), her reserved co-worker Darcy (Tilly Keeper), and her judgy university buddy Cassandra (Elisha Applebaum). She’s also recovering from an abrupt and unceremonious break-up with her long-term boyfriend, Tom (Ted Norman).
The series is rooted in the Black British experience from the small moments (Queenie still has to show her security badge at work even when she’s on the company’s diversity poster) to the bigger ones (in a work dispute, everyone automatically believes the white man). It’s also rooted in the immigrant experience, with Queenie’s grandmother’s struggle to find joy after leaving Jamaica, and her inability to talk about those feelings has a trickle-down effect on her family. But above all, it is how those things affect something we all know well: the experience of being in your twenties — that uncertain time between college graduation and settling into adulthood where mistakes both large and small are made.
