Rebecca Nicholson

The 1975 novel might be barred from US schools and libraries, but it gets a hugely important telling here. It’s powerful, sweet – and with a cast as excellent as Heartstopper’s

A couple of years ago, Judy Blume noted that book banning was not only undergoing a resurgence in the US, but was at that point “much worse” than she had noticed during the 1980s. Blume is one to know: her 1975 novel Forever..., about teenage sex and desire, continues to be banned by school districts and libraries, as repression and censorship gallop on at a pace. This Netflix adaptation of Blume’s novel, which loses the ellipsis, is not only timely but important: through it, the story continues to be told, even if it is in a different medium.

As the world edges ever closer to authoritarianism, it would be incredible to watch June fight back against a hellish, misogynistic dystopia. And yet, the final season is as bleak as ever. Where’s the hope we all need?

Great timing! For those who are finding the second season of The Last of Us too upbeat, too optimistic, just too damn cheerful, here comes The Handmaid’s Tale, returning for a final run of utter despair and soul-destroying misery. The Emmy-winning take on Margaret Atwood’s novel is back for a sixth and last season, having remarkably stretched out the first novel from a semi-faithful adaptation into a sprawling dystopian hellhole that never lets anyone win.

Cynthia Erivo plays sextuplets! Katie Holmes is an undertaker! And Kumail Nunjiani is the new Tiger King! The super cool, celebrity-packed show is even wilder than ever

The best thing about Poker Face is that it doesn’t bother trying to shore up what it knows is a flimsy premise. Fans of the first season will recall that Charlie Cale, Natasha Lyonne’s wisecracking 70s detective homage, has an in-built ability to detect a lie as soon as someone tells it. Instead of trying to explain this gift away as the result of a gamma storm or spider bite or covert government experiment, it now accepts that, yeah, she has a “freaky little lie detector trick”, that’s the extent of the idea, got a problem with that? These days, Charlie waves away any queries about it with an “Eh”, a shrug and a cheeky nudge of the baseball cap and aviator shades.