Is Lena Dunham’s Too Much basically just Emily in Paris with red phone boxes?

Everyone is talking about Too Much, Lena Dunham’s new show – the first since she became ‘the voice of a generation’ with Girls, way back in the 2010s. Opinions are divided. Some are saying it’s romantic and sweet, and girls are identifying with its lead character Jessica Salmon (Megan Stalter), a deluded devotee of British period dramas who relocates to London from New York after a break-up.

Others are saying it’s basically Emily in Paris with red phone boxes instead of baguettes, and that Dunham (who also now lives in London) has lost the plot.

Meanwhile, I’m just trying to work out whether I’m too old for Too Much or, to use a quaint old English phrase, whether it’s too much of a muchness. 

To be fair, I was probably too old even for Girls. Back then, when I was accidentally standing on Lego and sitting in soft plays wishing I was dead, I couldn’t really relate to these racy New York millennials who had sexy afternoon shenanigans, constantly drooping bra straps, obtuse relationships and warehouse parties that were soundtracked to Grimes. Who were these people? It was nothing like my youth, which was spent sharing a can of Hooch next to a condemned gas fire and looking at a picture of John Squire from The Stone Roses. 

Now, almost 15 years later, I’m feeling similarly baffled. Who ARE these people? Jessica is a whiny, emotionally unstable advertising producer who wears Victorian nightgowns, accidentally sets herself on fire and breaks into her ex-boyfriend’s flat by smashing a window with a garden gnome. (To be fair, this sounds quite funny on paper, but on screen it’s unhinged.)

Despite being a royal pain in the arse, she is very pleased with herself and everyone thinks she’s a beautiful, adorable, highly original genius – even though in real life, people would probably cross the Westway to avoid her. 

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In true rom-com style, she also manages to fall in love with a pretty indie musician called Felix (played by Will Sharpe from The White Lotus) on her first day in town. We’re encouraged to think this is the greatest romance ever told, but again I’m far too long in the tooth to be taken in by that. Call me cynical, but when you’ve been around the block a few times, a dalliance with a musician who wears black nail varnish and plays guitar in a pub in South London means one thing and one thing only – an emergency trip to the GUM clinic.  

To add to the overall lack of gravitas, the show is peppered with half-baked Mr Darcy tropes and tiresome American-in-London gaffes. Jessica gasps when she sees Buckingham Palace, is pulled up for calling a pub ‘a bar’, (as if we don’t also call them bars), doesn’t know what a Jaffa Cake is and thinks the estate she’s staying in will have manicured lawns and a gravel path. Instead – badoom, tish! – it’s a concrete council block in Zone 27. You’d think someone as smart as Dunham would be too sophisticated for this kind of stuff. All that’s missing is a cameo from Baby Spice in a Beefeater hat. 

It’s a shame, because I recently rewatched Girls and finally understood what the fuss was about – it really was one of those one-off, culture-shifting shows that defined a generation. But maybe expectations are too high and you can’t be the voice, or even a voice of a generation twice.

Maybe Too Much is just another Netflix show that some will love and some will hate, like that crazy Brit invention you spread on your toast. Personally, though, I’d rather watch something more realistic, that isn’t full of boring, self-mythologising people in stained vintage nighties. When’s the new season of Emily in Paris?

Too Much is on Netflix.Lucy Sweet is a freelance journalist. Read more on her Substack.

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