Every generation has its own idea of the romantic-comedy: the screwball japes of the 1930s, the second-wave feminism of the 1980s, the raunchy male gaze of the 2000s, and then, in our modern era, the great confessional. And the definitive text of this latest variety is Lena Dunham’s Girls, a startlingly funny TV show that, from 2012 to 2017, embraced the ambient horror of millennial dating. This week, Dunham returns with her sophomore show, Netflix’s Too Much. Co-created with her partner, Luis Felber, it looks back through the ages to sound a paean to the romcoms of yesteryear.
Meg Stalter is Jessica, an executive at a New York advertising agency who, after the breakdown of her relationship (and her mental health), is dispatched to London to oversee a shoot. Her charmless ex Zeb (Michael Zeben) has shacked up with an impossibly chipper influencer played by Emily Ratajkowski. So, naturally, Jess seizes the chance for escape. And she makes immediate emotional inroads by meeting Will Sharpe’s Felix, a washed-up musician with hair so fabulous it might’ve walked out of a Hugh Grant mugshot. Their romance – full of predictable obstacles – embraces, and then busts, romcom clichés. “When I trust my own instincts,” Jess notes, “chaos always follows.” And so it does, as life and work and love and purpose collide in a London that proves to be woefully undersold by the work of Richard Curtis.
Stalter – who emerged via social media and rose to fame on Sky’s near-perfect comedy, Hacks – has a generational charisma. The comparison to Dunham herself is lazy but inevitable. And there is a clear similarity in the manically self-deprecating delivery. “I tell the truth, almost to a fault,” she confesses. That’s a function of Dunham’s writing, which Stalter augments by flirting with surrealism. Jess’s time in London starts with her setting herself on fire and goes on to include cocaine, ketamine, spit play, donkey farms, and seduction by a professional footballer. “You’re a messy one, aren’t you?” the Leyton Orient midfielder observes. This fusion of an inimitable writing style and a top-level comic performer should result in a show that is more than the sum of its parts, and yet Too Much feels strangely limited.
Part of this is a function of appearing on Netflix. This guarantees that Too Much looks actively bad, utilising Netflix’s flat, over-saturated colour palette (yet incorporating other scenes that look blown-out, like they are waiting for a final colour grade). TV doesn’t need as cheap visuals as Netflix is currently insisting upon (as we’ve seen by the sumptuous production of shows, such as The Studio, on AppleTV+). And then there is the comparison with Dunham’s prior work. It is not fair to compare Too Much to a seminal work like Girls, but generic constraints feel more imposed here. The shenanigans appear with metronomic regularity, the bubblegum pop music bookending each episode. The protagonist might object to the “messy” descriptor – “I hate that word,” she informs a dinner party, “a diss that’s risen in popularity in recent years” – yet the truth is the show might have benefited from more mess.
This is not to say that Too Much is unenjoyable, just that it feels more like Starstruck than Hacks. A galaxy of stars and a panoply of references will keep people entertained. There are cameos for the likes of Jessica Alba, Kit Harington, Naomi Watts, Stephen Fry, and a deliciously depraved Andrew Scott, as well as returning Girls alumni Rita Wilson, Andrew Rannells, Richard E Grant and Dunham herself, who plays Jess’s depressive sister, Nora. As a romantic lead, Sharpe (so brilliant in the second season of The White Lotus) makes Felix an unexpectedly layered, sympathetic foil. Each episode riffs on the name of a classic romance film, while the series is littered with clips from movies as varied as Sense and Sensibility, Atonement, and Paddington. This may not be the first series in recent years to deconstruct the conventions of the romantic comedy, but none has done it with a better combination of respect and irreverence.
Romcoms, ultimately, grapple with the question of how to be happy. The comedy is incidental; the romance essential. Dunham flips the script. The fundamental question of Too Much is about the approach to adulthood. Should we see it as “a series of things that we don’t want to do but we have to” (Jess’s argument), or “trying to make sure you can do the things that you actually do want to do” (Felix’s rebuttal)? Cutting through the bulls*** means that you must arrive at something more profound, and this is something that Dunham, even when operating in first gear, is singularly equipped to deliver.
