In the first episode of “Too Much,” Lena Dunham’s loosely autobiographical new series that premieres on Netflix this Thursday, Jessica (played by Megan Stalter) arrives in London from Great Neck, N.Y. She is subletting a flat in the fictional Hoxton Grove Estate, and expects to find verdant grounds surrounding a stately building, like something one might find in a Merchant Ivory production.
“Good luck with that, love,” the cabdriver laughs as he drops her outside an apartment block with peeling paint. After all, the Britain we see onscreen — in period dramas or in modern Richard Curtis romantic comedies like “Notting Hill” — tends to emphasize a certain aspirational loveliness. It also tends to gloss over details — like the fact that “estate” can refer to both sprawling mansions and public housing.
This well-established idealization means that when Jessica first meets Felix (Will Sharpe), an indie musician inspired by Ms. Dunham’s real-life indie musician husband, Luis Felber, he quickly hypothesizes her reasons for being in London: “Let me guess, you’re one of those ‘Love Actually’-loving girls?” he asks with a grin. “You’re on a pilgrimage?”
While the British pilgrims fled to America’s shores about 400 years ago, Ms. Dunham, who moved to London in 2021, is one of the many Americans making the reverse journey today, seeking refuge in the coziness they have seen depicted onscreen or on the page. But as these Americans adjust to regional accents and codes of conduct, many are surprised by what they find. “It didn’t take long for me to understand some of the decay underneath the facade,” Ms. Dunham said in an email.
Dating Was ‘Hell on Earth’
Adrianna Cordero-Marino, who works as a consultant in the health care and pharmaceutical industries and describes herself as a “big ’90s rom-com girlie,” was so excited to start dating in London, she changed her Hinge location a week before she moved from Ambler, Pa., in late 2020. She liked the idea of finding a “quintessential cute little British boy” in the mold of Hugh Grant’s William in “Notting Hill.”
But once she arrived in London, Ms. Cordero-Marino, now 28, found that while the bumbling mannerisms that made Mr. Grant famous could be charming onscreen, a lot of the British men she met on dating apps lacked the “emotional intelligence” she was seeking.
This made her first year or two of dating in London “hell on earth,” she said. But she persevered, and soon met her current boyfriend, Michael Turnbull, 27, who “looks like Hugh Grant when he wears his green turtleneck,” but has a completely different temperament to the awkward “Notting Hill” character, and is able to match Ms. Cordero-Marino’s energy.
“Notting Hill” — the 1999 film about an American movie star falling for a British normie — inspired Madeleine Haddon, 35, to settle in the titular west London neighborhood when she moved to England in 2018. But once she arrived, she was pleased to find something she had not seen in the film: “so much cultural, racial and socioeconomic diversity.”
For Ms. Haddon, who has West Indian heritage, walking down the street and seeing lots of other Black people, and well-established Black-owned businesses, helped her feel like, “OK, this is for me,” she said.
Richard Curtis, who wrote “Notting Hill,” has said he regrets the film’s lack of characters of color, given the area’s longstanding Caribbean communities. It’s a shame, Ms. Haddon said, that “one of the most amazing things about being here is one of the things that is cut out of the frame in these romanticized depictions of the U.K.”
Nonfiction as Inspiration
Growing up in New York City, one of Bash Hendra’s favorite TV shows was “Elizabeth R” from the 1970s, starring Glenda Jackson as Queen Elizabeth I. “I want to be her,” Mr. Hendra, now 33, recalled thinking “in that 6-year-old, gay way.” He memorized the kings and queens of England rather than the presidents of the United States, got a tattoo of Elizabeth I’s signature on his arm and after college, moved to Britain to pursue a masters in classics at Cambridge University.
Mr. Hendra, who is a host of a podcast about L.G.B.T.Q. history, said that mixing with real-life “posh, upper-crust types” at Cambridge helped him realize that “these people are fun to fantasize about, but they have absolutely nothing to do with my values.” In practice, the perspectives of people invested in “this class-consciousness aspect of English society” can be “actually very limited and narrow.”
But in London, where Mr. Hendra moved after his degree, he has found that walking the historic streets and visiting literary landmarks feels “like you are a part of this ongoing, centuries-old project.”
“It’s also searching for a form of connection to something that does feel like it is a bit lost in our social media present,” he added. (Many queer venues in London have closed in recent years, Mr. Hendra said, partly because of the cost of living crisis — an issue that may sound familiar to Americans — moving even more of the gay dating scene to the apps.)
The Austen Effect
In “Too Much,” Jessica and her family’s comfort viewing is the 1995 film “Sense and Sensibility,” based on the 1811 Jane Austen novel. And for many, romanticizing Britain begins with Austen.
In high school, Angela Terhark, now 46, fell in love with the BBC television version of “Pride and Prejudice” starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. She said Austen’s novels and their onscreen adaptations offered “a nice, serene, comfortable journey” toward a “guaranteed happy ending.”
In 2017, Ms. Terhark left Cumberland, Md., for Buckinghamshire, in southern England, to marry a British man she had been dating long-distance for a couple of years. They had met on the trans-Atlantic dating site iloveyouraccent.com. But, “he turned out to be more of a Wickham than a Mr. Darcy,” Ms. Terhark said, referring to the calculating “Pride and Prejudice” character. The pair split in 2023.
Over the years, Ms. Terhark, who works in hospitality, has had to adjust to other realities of British life — like blunt workplace banter. One co-worker for example (“very lovingly”) nicknamed her “Crazy Yank.” Not that she has minded. “If they’re teasing you, it means they like you,” she said.
Since the Trump administration began its second term, more people from the United States have asked Ms. Haddon whether life in London is as good as it seems, either on social media or onscreen. It will not be quite what you expect, she has been telling them — but you will be pleasantly surprised by what you do find.
The post These Americans Went Looking for a Romanticized Britain. They Found a Different Story. appeared first on New York Times.
