If you watched Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret? and loved it, Netflix has a brand-new series with exactly the same vibes. But why was Forever banned, and does that mean you can’t watch it?
With Wednesday Season 2, Squid Game Season 3, and Stranger Things Season 5 all still somewhere on the horizon, Netflix has turned its attention to the limited series in the meantime.
Much like the streaming service’s back catalog, it’s not letting us down. Every month of new TV is a plentiful one, with May gifting us Forever, dubbed a “reimagined classic.”
However, you might have seen news that Forever has been banned – but this points to the show’s origins rather than what you’ll be watching.
Judy Blume’s Forever was banned, but not on Netflix
While the Netflix series itself isn’t banned, the book it’s based on – Judy Blume’s 1975 novel of the same name – was banned in the 1980s as well as in a Florida school district in 2023.
When it was originally released, parents quickly took issue with the fact Blume’s book not only followed a young girl losing her virginity, but did so in incredible detail. Planned Parenthood and the pill are also key parts of the storyline.
Blume had already experience book banning when her children’s elementary school principal refused to put her 1970 debut, Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret?, on the library shelves.
“I’d rather have my daughter read pornography than Forever,” one mother told the New York Times in 1978. “At least she’d know that was wrong, instead of having this book about a nice, normal girl who has sex and then it ends and the book’s over.”
By 1982, schools in Pennsylvania, Florida, and Ohio challenged the book for not promoting abstinence, with it becoming the seventh most frequently challenged book during the 90s.
“In the ’80s is when it all broke loose, after Reagan’s election,” she told Variety in 2023. “He believed that menstruation wasn’t a topic that girls should read about, never mind how many kids already had their periods.”
Blue spoke of her experiences (particularly around Planned Parenthood) in the years that followed, with the debate coming to a head again after Forever was one of 80 books banned by a school district in Florida in 2023.
In an interview on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg in 2023, Blume said, “I thought that was over, frankly… I came through the 80s when book banning was really at its height. And it was terrible. And then libraries and schools began to get policies in place, and we saw a falling off of the desire to censor books.
“Now it is back, it is back much worse – this is in America. It is back so much worse than it was in the 80s. Because it’s become political.”
What is Forever about?
A modern-day adaptation of Blume’s novel, Netflix’s take on Forever follows two Black teens falling in love in 2018 Los Angeles.
Netflix’s official synopsis reads, “Reunited as teens, two childhood friends fall deeply in love, experiencing the joy and heartache of a first romance that will change their lives forever.”
The story is paced over eight episodes, with Blume serving as an executive producer of the series.
“From Trayvon Martin’s murder up until 2020 – around when Trayvon and Mike Brown and Eric Garner and Philando Castile and Alton Sterling and Sandra Bland [were killed] – Black people were living a horror story,” Mara Brock Akil explained to Netflix.
“Even for the Black families that got their kids to safe ground, we were scared for them. Are they going to be in jail? Dawn says it: ‘Your little flippant mouth – I can’t stand it so I can only imagine a cop. You’re going to be dead or in jail with that mouth.’”
“The first love that we choose based on who we are so far is a very needed and important rite of passage,” she adds. “When I was a young woman reading [Forever], I had questions. I wanted to make that leap. I understood it was complicated. I understood it involved a lot. It was exciting and scary.”
Forever Netflix cast
Michael Cooper Jr, Lovie Simone, and Karen Pittman lead the Forever cast on Netflix.
The full cast list is as follows:
- Lovie Simone as Keisha
- Michael Cooper Jr as Justin
- Karen Pittman as Dawn
- Wood Harris as Eric
- Marvin Lawrence Winans III as Jaden
- Xosha Roquemore as Shelly
- Barry Shabaka Henley as George
- Ali Gallo as Chloe
- Niles Fitch as Darius
- Paigion Walker as Tiffany
- Adriyan Rae as Brittany
- Xavier Mills as Christian
- E’myri Crutchfield as Tammy
Is it worth watching?
Reviews for Forever are overwhelmingly positive, with one saying, “Mara Brock Akil’s take on Judy Blume’s Forever is the Girlfriends creator’s finest work.”
Variety continued, “The show captures the essence of Blume’s novel and remixes it, not only for a 21st-century lens, but for generations of Black people who haven’t seen themselves represented so vividly and tenderly. It reminds us of the fullness of our love stories, lives, and the villages that anchor our dreams and help us piece together our broken hearts.”
“Forever sees that any true understanding of these children must include an understanding of the forces that have so lovingly, if imperfectly, shaped them,” The Hollywood Reporter agreed.
The LA Times also added, “As a coming-of-age story, it’s more about the electrifying present than the unwritten future, however often that future comes up for discussion. Ultimately, it leads our heroes to the common enough question of what happens to their union after graduation.”
Forever is streaming on Netflix now. For more, check out new TV shows streaming this month, the best TV shows of the year so far, and anticipated 2025 releases you cannot miss.
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