All in all, Never Have I Ever has the universal teen tropes and conventions any aficionado of the genre will love but it very much has heart to it. All of the characters pop off the screen and you want to see more of them and their stories.
Should season two get the go-ahead from Netflix, it would be great to see more of Devi’s friends Eleanor Wong (Ramona Young) and Fabiola Torres (Lee Rodriguez), who frankly don’t get enough screen time amid Devi’s best-laid plans to get “railed”.
There are touches of Emma Stone’s Easy A and Pride and Prejudice, along with Sex Education and its multi-layered story strands and diverse casting – even the archetypal jock Paxton Hall-Yoshida (Darren Barnett) has Japanese ancestry after the writers heard the star speaking Japanese on the phone while on set and wanted to incorporate it into the character.
Many new teen shows owe a great debt to teen crime mystery drama Riverdale, which has paved the way for many more, and Never Have I Ever lovingly pays tribute to its forebears with some fun nods.
Equal parts comedy, heartbreak and romance, Never Have I Ever is the Netflix comedy worth binge-watching next.
Never Have I Ever is streaming on Netflix now.
