Lena Dunham, of “Girls” fame, with her husband Luis Felber, has created a romantic comedy, “Too Much,” premiering Thursday on Netflix. It’s lighter in tone than that previous show but still comes with plenty of dysfunction, self-sabotage and sex. (Drugs too, though it doesn’t make a case for them.) The titles of the episodes establish a negative relation to the genre: “Terms of Resentment,” “Enough, Actually,” “Notting Kill,” “Nonsense and Sensibility,” “Pity Woman,” “Ignore Sunrise,” “To Doubt a Boy.” But in the end, it wants what they’re having.
Dunham, who wrote or co-wrote all 10 episodes and directed several, has elected not to star, but has brought in Megan Stalter, from “Hacks” as her stand-in, Jessica. (Dunham plays Nora, Jessica’s depressed older sister, mostly from a bed.) Like Jessica, Dunham is an American living in England, in a relationship with a musician, so we may credit at least some details to the authority of their shared experience.
Jessica once wanted to direct films, to “say something about the female experience,” but she has been working for 15 years as a line producer for an ad agency, a job at which she is evidently good, but which means little to her. When her New York firm merges with a British company, she’s sent to London for three months to help make a Christmas commercial, starring Rita Ora. Having been left six months before by her longtime boyfriend, Zev (Michael Zegen) for willowy knitting influencer Wendy Jones (Emily Ratajkowski), to whom he’s become engaged, she is ready to go — all the more so because her happy place is “love stories set in pastoral England.”
On her first night in town, Jessica discovers that the “estate” she thought she was renting is not Pemberley but public housing; she takes a taxi to a random pub, where Felix (Will Sharpe), the boy in this 30-something love story, is performing a sad song to a few patrons. They meet-cute in the bathroom. He walks her home. They talk. He lends her his coat. (There is, interestingly, no attempt to convince us that Felix is a major talent; indeed, the suggestion is that such career as he had is on a downward slope.)
People fall out of love on television almost as often as they fall into it, sometimes as a prelude to falling back into it, or falling for someone else, and less often deciding that they are in fact happier on their own. From the wealth of self-help books, advice columns, therapists, country songs and, yes, romantic comedies that fill our culture, I reckon the messier elements of “Too Much” will feel familiar to many. There is plenty of chaos in this comedy, but its best moments come in passages of relative calm. (They are something of a relief from the dominant emotional mishigas.) A long, wordless scene consisting of a single overhead shot of Felix and Jess on a bed, as she listens to a mix he made her, is remarkably moving, not least because the actors are doing so much while doing so little.
Even as she becomes involved with Felix, Jessica continues her practice of recording private videos on her phone, on TikTok, as a sort of therapeutic diary, ranting about Zev; many are addressed directly to Wendy Jones. Meanwhile, she deals with Andrew Scott as a pretentious director (“We’ve got to make this feel like it’s Ken Loach doing a Christmas film”) and mucks in with new boss Jonno (Richard E. Grant) and colleagues Josie (Daisy Bevan), Kim (Janicza Bravo), who is interested in Josie, and chatterbox Boss (Leo Reich), who has published an “experimental PDF novel, to much acclaim” and broke up with someone because “he did not have the emotional intelligence necessary to deal with someone whose love language is being a b— in a fun way.” She confounds them with her loud, childlike American energy, filling empty spaces with words, making jokes that don’t come off. (“Just kidding” is a thing she says a lot.)
Recently sober, Felix has his own complement of bandmates, friends and friendly ex-girlfriends, including three women named Polly — Adèle Exarchopoulos plays the important one — whose history with Felix makes Jess nervous. (Jennifer Saunders is a bit of a surprise.) Sharpe, last seen on TV in the second season of “The White Lotus,” plays him quietly, a little melancholy, perhaps, but not unduly moody; even in a difficult situation — he’s carrying just as much baggage as Jessica — his energy remains low-key and relatively grounded, though he will be called upon to do some panicked running.
If the series has a fault, it’s that there’s possibly too much “Too Much.” In the movies, the business of “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl” (substitute your preferred genders), has traditionally been settled in under two hours. The streaming economy, however, has stretched the narrative timeline, elongated the arc, padding out a predetermined number of episodes with extraneous digressions, giving minor characters things to do that don’t necessarily contribute to the story, while not developing into much on their own. There are brief cutaways to Jonno’s home life, which at least has the benefit of giving us more Grant, plus Naomi Watts as his wife, Ann; scenes back in New York likewise give us unrelated time with Rita Wilson as Jessica’s mother, Lois; Rhea Perlman her mouthy grandmother, Dottie; Dunham’s Nora and Andrew Rannells as her ex-husband, Jameson, who left her in favor of “exploring non-monogamy with a couple both named Cody.”
More problematic, an exasperating character like Jessica, lived with at such length, can become exhausting, and she does. Dunham mitigates this, and the roller coaster of Jessica and Felix’s relationship, by employing an episodic structure, setting whole or nearly whole episodes against different backdrops: a wedding, a work trip, a dinner party, Felix at home with his parents (Stephen Fry and Kaori Momoi), Jess and Felix up all night (having sex, watching “Paddington”) when she has to be fresh for work in the morning, and a flashback to Jess’ history with Zev (he’s been made a “writer,” shorthand for pathetic). Taken individually, as discrete stories, they’re easier to digest. The writing is sharp, the performances spot-on.
Stalter, who is in her fourth season stealing scenes on “Hacks,” plays a character halfway around the world from her character there. Where her Kayla is brash, entitled and self-confident to a fault, Jess is needy, full of second thoughts and self-doubts, even as she projects a kind of frantic cheerfulness. (“I’m a chill girl, I’m normal,” she tells herself, doubtfully.) Dunham often shoots Stalter straight on, filling the screen with her face, which pays benefits; she has great presence. (And sings very sweetly too, better than her boyfriend.)
The endgame, when we get to it, could not be any more conventional — which, I imagine, is the idea. One might think it parodic if it hadn’t been established that this is the dream in which Jessica lives; anything less would be unkind.
I see I’ve neglected to mention the dog. There is a little dog too, who plays an important part.
The post ‘Too Much’ has the chaos of ‘Girls,’ but it’s at its best in moments of calm appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
