Too many people are predisposed to disliking the work of Lena Dunham. It’s really a shame, because her new Netflix series, Too Much, is so much fun.
It concerns a New Yorker in her early 30s who breaks up with her boyfriend, moves to London, has a meet-cute with a musician, and falls deeply in love. Sound familiar? You may have witnessed a similar storyline unfolding on Dunham’s Instagram page; she co-created Too Much with Luis Felber, whom she married not long after she landed at Heathrow in 2021.
Dunham’s tendency to overshare can be a turnoff to those who want to watch the show rather than the show-runner. Is it possible to separate the social-media presence from the art? Even a casual reader of “Page Six” knows more than they probably should about her rescue-dog dramas, medical mysteries, bed rotting, and love affairs. (Too Much revisits them all.)
Still, after a 15-year career that most Hollywood lifers would envy, there’s little point in wanting Dunham to button up. Her observational eye misses no detail. In Too Much, despite some flashbacks to her old life in Brooklyn, she is out of her element in London. And there, as a writer, she’s at her best.
London is funny. Thanks to a common language and scene-stealing presence in popular culture, it feels known. Or at least knowable. But any newcomer can tell you that figuring this place out is a messy process. In Too Much, Dunham scrapes away the layers of mannered politesse to reveal the subtleties and quirks.
It takes a great character to write one, and Dunham’s gift is that she can conjure a dozen for a single show. Her heroine, a line producer named Jessica (charmingly acted by Megan Stalter, of Hacks), is convincing as a workaholic feminist even when she’s skipping around Hackney dressed like a Christmas tree, her blue fingernails sparkling in the light of the streetlamps.
Dunham is an A-plus student in everything English. Jessica’s boss, Jonna, played by Richard E. Grant, runs a successful advertising firm. By day, he’s sufficiently with-it to ensure that every luxury trinket in his $10 million Chelsea manse is polished to a high sheen. But bring out the cocaine at a dinner party and he can make Kate Moss blush (before he collapses into a puddle). Meanwhile, his artificially cheery wife, Ann (Naomi Watts), connects with Jessica on matters of sexual health and “the menopause.” (That last bit gives whiffs of the British TV presenter Mariella Frostrup.)
The fact that Felix, Jessica’s drifter boyfriend, is connected to these two might be surprising. He briefly dated one of their daughters in boarding school, before his father skipped out on the tuition.
In a scene at his family’s sad little bungalow, near an airport, Dunham teases out their delusions. Felix’s fortysomething sister still plays with stuffed animals. His mother picks him up from the train station in an ancient Rolls-Royce—40 minutes late—and forces him to wander the halls of the grand old house that was once their happy home. (So what if he was abused there by his nanny?) This portrait is a send-up of Britain’s upper classes and their reluctance to part with expensive traditions—Harrow, Hurlingham, the house in Hampshire …
The obsessions with Christmas and Grade II–listed houses, the too casual attitude toward sex offenders, the universal love of a dance floor and a D.J. set—the English idiosyncrasies show up in Too Much when they’re least expected. It’s a hallmark of the expat experience.
Will this series become London-rom-com legend in the vein of Bridget Jones’s Diary, Catastrophe, and Notting Hill? Gen Z will be the judge of that, but Too Much’s outsider perspective and insider expertise make it a strong contender. IRL, love is strange, and Dunham generally avoids the clichés and embraces the complexities of Jessica and Felix’s new reality: chronic urinary-tract infections, income inequalities, and exes who linger, as memories or otherwise.
If Dunham is once again having a moment, so what? On the cusp of her 40s, she’s living her best life. And that’s after six great seasons of Girls, a memoir (sold at age 26 for $3.5 million), and a nascent career as a filmmaker.
Whether you love her or leave her, it’s hard to argue that Dunham is not a generational talent. And she’s turned us all into her voyeurs.
Ashley Baker is a Deputy Editor at AIR MAIL and a co-host of the Morning Meeting podcast
