Netflix’s Too Much is a love letter to Lena Dunham’s life in London. The creator of Girls on HBO upped and left Los Angeles after the pandemic to try and find herself in the Big Smoke, but instead she found love in the form of Luis Felber, the English musician and co-creator of Too Much.
Dunham and Felber are the principal inspirations for Jessica (Meg Stalter) and Felix (Will Sharpe), the main characters of Too Much.
In typical London fashion, Jessica and Felix end up in a whirlwind relationship after meeting at an open mic night in a grotty pub.
It’s here where the London location spotting really kicks in: not least because this particular London pub is located on an entirely different side of London to the estate where Jessica lives, so it’s hardly her local. To stop you agonising over where’s where, here are all the London filming locations in Too Much.
St Peter’s Estate
Jessica moves to London intending to live on a palatial and verdant country estate, only to end up on an actual housing estate in Tower Hamlets. Although it’s referred to as Hoxton Grove Estate in the show, Jessica’s estate is actually St Peter’s Estate, an iconic estate nestled in the backstreets of Bethnal Green, close to Columbia Road and Brick Lane.
The Ivy House, Nunhead
If you think you recognise the pub where Jessica and Felix meet, you may be right: it’s The Ivy House in Nunhead, and it holds special significance to the show’s creators. Felber played gigs at this pub when he was younger. “Ivy House was one of the first venues I played in when I moved to London at 17 or 18,” Felber told TimeOut. “We wanted it to feel real.”
Even though it’s meant to be a bit of a grotty English pub, The Ivy House is actually a Grade II listed property and it’s London's first co-operatively owned pub, so it’s got history!
London Bridge
Despite Jessica going to the pub in Nunhead and living in Hoxton, she and Felix somehow meet up on Southwark Street by Borough Market, where he offers to walk her home. “What are you doing in like, South London without any of your friends?” he asks her. The better question would be how she managed to seemingly walk from Nunhead to London Bridge, a walk which should take an hour and 22 minutes.
Hackney City Farm
Hackney residents will be familiar with the site of Felix’s “Donkey Fest” gig, where he plays amongst a bunch of farm animals and Jess overdoes it on the ket. It’s filmed at Hackney City Farm in Haggerston Park. Too Much offers some well timed promo for the farmyard, which just welcomed a new litter of piglets!
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Notting Hill
This one’s a bit obvious, but Jess and Felix’s amble around multi-coloured houses takes place in Notting Hill, in west London. They specifically focus on the blue door from the film Notting Hill, which starred Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, which is located at 280 Westbourne Park Road.
Shoreditch Town Hall
The artists workspace of Shoreditch Town Hall was used for multiple locations in Too Much, including the vet scenes and hospital scenes. “The hospital ward needed to feel almost sort of Victorian, slightly heightened and slightly different,” supervising location manager Nick Marshall told House and Garden, “so it was a good fit for for what the script required and what the director required.”
De Beauvoir Town
Of course Felix’s impossibly gorgeous French ex-girlfriend lives in De Beauvoir. Indeed, the scenes filmed with Polly (played by Adèle Exarchopoulos) and Felix in her expansive, glass-filled flat are set in a property in De Beauvoir, east London.
The Ivy Richmond Brasserie
In the scene where Jess goes out for dinner with her new colleagues and a Leyton Orient footballer (well done, Lena Dunham), they arrive at The Ivy Brasserie in Richmond. Staff can be seen wearing The Ivy uniforms and the tell-tale font can be spotted on the restaurant’s menus.
Parliament Hill, Hampstead Heath
The iconic Parliament Hill is a well established filming location, having appeared in everything from Marvel’s Eternals to Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy. It crops up towards the end of Too Much, when Felix is walking home in a rather sad state. No better place for it, really.
