Girls gone bad: Lena Dunham’s Too Much is just not good enough | Lena Dunham

There’s one TV present that has been loved most frequently, and most reliably, amongst my cohort in New York: Ladies, the seminal HBO dramedy about Brooklyn’s downwardly cellular and extremely self-important inventive class of the 2010s. Although a cultural lightning rod when it aired from 2012 till 2017 – its whiteness, convincing narcissism, frank sexuality and frequent nudity all catnip for the cresting blogosphere and cyclical ethical panic – Ladies has rightfully settled into its standing as top-of-the-line tv collection of the twenty first century, a foundational textual content for millennials in addition to a biting satire of solipsistic, Obama-era striving. (Though viewers too younger to recollect it as something apart from canon now see the women’ flailing – their freedom to put on horrible prints, hearken to Vampire Weekend and be earnest – as one thing to be envied quite than derided, a core tenet of the millennial redemption arc.)The present was all the time sharper than tendentious criticism acknowledged, a understanding send-up to not be taken too significantly, although it did significantly form the TV that adopted – the thought of an “unlikable” feminine protagonist was all the time ahistorical, however messy, compelling ladies on tv proliferated in Hannah Horvath’s wake, from the women of Broad Metropolis to Insecure’s Issa, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag to Pamela Adlon’s Higher Issues. It’s sadly nonetheless radical to see somebody who appears to be like like creator, author and star Lena Dunham be bare on display screen with out judgment; although tv has explored intercourse rather more efficiently than films within the years since, no present has totally succeeded Ladies’ unvarnished imaginative and prescient of intercourse as one thing each banal and important. No surprise so many individuals are rewatching it.All of which is to say: expectations had been excessive for Too A lot, Dunham’s new TV collection for Netflix. Although not her first venture since Ladies – she helmed HBO’s ill-fated collection Tenting, made two function movies (one significantly better than the opposite) and directed the (glorious) pilot of Business – Too A lot is the primary true follow-up to the present that made her a cultural flashpoint on the age of 26. From the leap, Jessica, performed by the comic Megan Stalter, seems as a pure successor to Dunham’s annoying however subtly endearing Horvath. As soon as once more in Brooklyn, Jessica does one thing headstrong and inadvisable: she breaks into her ex-boyfriend Zev’s (Michael Zegen) condominium and screams him and his new girlfriend Wendy (longtime Dunham pal Emily Ratajkowski) awake, hysterically demanding that he declare leaving her to be the worst factor anybody has ever executed.The novice and in the end futile residence invasion is the primary signal that Too A lot will, like Ladies earlier than it, concern at the least one prickly and off-putting character who’s refreshingly and unashamedly not skinny. It is usually the primary signal that one thing is off. Whereas Hannah irritated with a recognizable, skewering self-obsession, Jessica’s Too A lot-ness – surprising quantity, machine-gun supply, inherent awkwardness – is a gag. Stalter comes from the world of front-facing digicam web comedy, the place heightened bits and jarring phrases reign supreme (her finest work – “hello, homosexual!” – will get caught in your head for hours). The interpretation to tv works in small components, as in Hacks, however flounders as a lead, significantly one supposed to draw a good-looking musician (Will Sharpe) at a pub and succeed as an promoting director whereas displaying as much as work in bunny ears.Dunham is now in her late 30s and married (her husband, the indie musician Luis Felber, co-created the present along with her); nobody will begrudge her avoiding a repeat of the Ladies components, which no present has been capable of crack (Adults tried this spring, and failed). With Too A lot, she steers removed from any particular scene, as a substitute specializing in the connection between Jessica and Sharpe’s Felix, loosely based mostly on her personal. The ten-part romcom options the welcome presence of Dunham’s underrated appearing, a buzzy lead in Stalter, a refreshingly gray imaginative and prescient of London, a murderers’ row of cameos – amongst them, Andrew Scott, Naomi Watts, Stephen Fry and Package Harington – and delicate scenes between two weirdo lovers. However with no scene or a trope to satirize – Dunham, by means of Jessica, is totally enamored by English romcoms from Satisfaction & Prejudice to Notting Hill – its comedy falters. Lengthy on grating gags and quick on zingers, Too A lot is, and I say this begrudgingly, an overlong and underbaked disappointment.Meg Stalter and Lena Dunham. {Photograph}: PAIt is, nonetheless, very a lot of its period in tv, when the downsides of the streaming growth have come into clearer focus. Episode lengths for Too A lot fluctuate from 31 minutes to a dishevelled 50+, much less proof of inventive flexibility than a resistance to enhancing. Like Jessica’s favored nightgowns, the chapters are outsized and diaphanous, customary Netflix second-screen fare; some, such because the standout third episode depicting an unintentional all-nighter punctuated by repeated, insistent intercourse as Jessica and Felix fall in love, believably advance their relationship with Dunham’s distinctive sense of erotic realism. Others, equivalent to a Jessica assembly Felix’s buddies and, true to kind, doing an excessive amount of ketamine, lure the characters in a cyclical loop of dysfunction. Dunham is, because the critic Lili Loofbourow put it, a superb miniaturist – Too A lot shines when the world falls away from Jessica and Felix, as they construct the couple’s secret language of bits, vulnerabilities and callbacks. However as quickly because the present meanders – to some egregiously overdrawn co-workers, to Jessica’s mom (Rita Wilson) on FaceTime throughout the pond, Dunham loses her grip. One scene, Jessica is getting a dressing-down from her boss (Richard E Grant) for her efficiency; the following, they’re bingeing coke at a piece occasion at his home.However maybe most disappointing to me, as a fan of Ladies, is the present’s tenuous grip on the fact of the physique. It’s refreshing to see Stalter, a plus-size actor, play an unabashed character who typically will get what she needs, and whose romantic rivals are performed by Ratajkowski, the epitome of typical sizzling on Instagram, and the French film star Adèle Exarchopoulos. It additionally feels a bit disingenuous to not acknowledge appearances in any respect, significantly when the tradition is regressing again to the consuming disorder-riddled “skinny is in” of the 2000s. Throughout one early intercourse scene, Felix lays a hand on Jessica’s bandaged abdomen – all the time hapless, she burned herself – however doesn’t seize her, as if he respects her curves, however doesn’t crave her, as if they’re inappropriate of attraction.Such is the muted power of Too A lot, a present without delay too broad and never sufficient. Dunham, as soon as the tongue-in-cheek “voice of a era”, has succeeded once more – sadly this time, it’s in making Netflix background TV.