The first season of Justin Simien’s Dear White People was one of Netflix’s most successful shows, certainly better than I think it had any right to be. Most movie-to-TV series adaptations fall flat or miss what made the film work but Simien smartly took the same themes, and many of the same characters, and gave them room to breathe over the course of multiple episodes. He was able to expand on his ideas regarding race in a way that was as smart and just as funny as on the big screen. And now the show is back for season two, which looks just as good.
The students of Winchester University are still up to their eyeballs in racially-charged drama as the fallout from last season’s blackface party continues. Sam (Logan Browning) is full of fiery rhetoric as usual, and she’s once again the target of haters who don’t like what she has to say. There’s a greater sense of mystery going into this season, but the humor is on-point (“Che Guevara at Fashion Week!” as ever and Simien seems to be settling into a groove.
Featuring a tremendous cast that includes Logan Browning, Brandon P. Bell, Antoinette Robertson, DeRon Horton, John Patrick Amedori, Ashley Blaine Featherson and Marque Richardson, Dear White People Vol. 2 hits Netflix on May 4th.
