And so, as the fifth series of Netflix’s Emily in Paris inevitably rolls around just in time to become the backdrop to millions of festive hangovers, our plucky American marketeer continues her European voyage of self-discovery, like a BookTok rip-off of a Henry James heroine. Paris? So last season. Now Lily Collins’s outlandishly dressed, immaculately power-bobbed Emily is set on conquering the Italian capital.
Collins, it has been noted many times, does bear a striking resemblance to Audrey Hepburn (one scene in which she runs behind a bus to chase after a misplaced silk scarf reminded me of that uncanny valley Galaxy chocolate advert from a few years ago, featuring a CGI Hepburn, which speaks volumes about how strangely sterile this show still feels).
But this is no Roman Holiday for our girl. Emily – for reasons that, thanks to the series’ amnesiac quality, it is initially impossible to remember – has ended up here to head up the Italian outpost of Agence Grateau, the marketing company owned by her boss Sylvie (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, still très chic, still mildly terrifying).
The expository dialogue does a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to scene setting; everything is explained for those of us with one eye on the TV and one eye on our phone. “It’s my first day running the Rome office and I still have to prepare for the meeting with your mother!” Emily trills helpfully in the first episode to her latest love interest, Marcello (Eugenio Franceschini).
Her skill for attracting men who seem to embody the national stereotype of any country she visits remains unmatched. Marcello is a tall, dark and handsome mamma’s boy who works for the family cashmere brand, and whose idea of a grand day out is a truffle hunt in the forest (he and his family are drawn, of course, with all the nuance of the Dolmio puppets). I look forward to the inevitable future series where Emily romances, say, a bullfighter from Spain, or a Volvo-driving Ikea employee from Sweden named Karl Karlsson. Meanwhile, her other exes, French Gabriel (Lucas Bravo) and English Alfie (Lucien Laviscount), now seem to be hanging out together in some sort of pan-European group for spurned men.
As ever, subplots and set pieces are thrown at us and then snatched away with alarming frequency; after all, this is a pretty, paper-doll world in which actions have no consequences, character development equates to getting a new haircut, and storylines seem to be an excuse to shoehorn in various references to consumer brands.
Case in point? An episode where Emily seems to be having “intimacy issues”, while also dealing with a tricky new campaign for the lingerie brand... Intimissimi. Another plot point about a pitch gone wrong seems to exist solely so that one of Emily’s friends can tell her: “You offendi’d Fendi!” And just when the show seems to be on the verge of saying something interesting about the dynamics of Sylvie’s open marriage, said character runs off to jump on a speedboat, which she then drives across the harbour like something from a perfume commercial.
New heights of literalism are reached when Emily’s best friend Mindy (Ashley Park) sings Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” while sitting in a giant martini glass, at a launch for a new coffee-flavoured vodka. Park’s effervescence just about makes it work; her performance is an undeniable bright spot, and so is the addition of Minnie Driver as an influencer “princess without a portfolio” who has married into Italian royalty but can’t afford the upkeep on the family palazzo. To fund her lavish life, she’s constantly doing incredibly naff Insta-sponcon. Driver is pitch-perfect as this glamorous grifter, bringing what feels like a much-needed injection of camp, self-aware energy.
That aside, though, experiencing Emily in Paris feels like allowing your brain to regress in real time. Watching it is like reliving the Barbie games I used to play with my sisters, where all our characters wore amazing outfits and events followed a sort of dream logic. There is, however, one scene that I couldn’t help but relate to. On a video call with her Parisian clients, Emily delivers a pitch that is, even by her low standards, truly dire. The Parisians’ response? To pull the plug and turn the screen off altogether.
