Parents' Guide to The Crossover

Poetic and heartfelt, this series about two young basketball phenoms on the verge is a worthy translation of Kwame Alexander's prizewinning novel. To answer the first question fans of the book might ask: No, the Crossover TV series isn't all in verse, which is a good thing. Though Alexander pulled it off beautifully in the book, the actors playing the members of the Bell family speak to each other like regular humans, though some of Alexander's rhyming couplets survive through Filthy's inner musings (which we hear articulated by narrator Daveed Diggs, who movingly makes clear the emotions behind the rhymes), and in JB's "beats" (he's an aspiring songwriter). Another Alexander convention gets a nod in The Crossover: vocabulary. The book is often accompanied by a list of vocabulary words when it's used in classrooms; here, Filthy enjoys picking just the right 50-cent word to express his emotions, and complicated words (and feelings!) like "pulchritudinous" and "abysmal" appear on-screen broken into syllables, dictionary-style, with their definitions while Filthy and others use it in context.

The Crossover also gets the emotions of its source material just right, and the actors playing the parts give performances that ring true: Filthy longs for romantic and basketball success, while JB worries he doesn't love basketball as much as his family wants him to. The disconnect between these two brothers' dreams seems destined to lead them into clashes on and off the basketball court, yet The Crossover also shows us a glimpse of their lives years in the future as their NBA fates hang in balance over a still-to-come NBA draft pick. Viewers will be sucked in instantly to the layers of drama -- from the Bell's family dynamics to court rivalries -- and they'll feel every bit of the characters' joy and pain.