Parents' Guide to Too Much

Fans of Lena Dunham's breakout series Girls will be unsurprised that Dunham is still mining her personal life for comic gold, with sparkling results. Messy, hilarious Jessica (Megan Stalter) is clearly an avatar for Dunham herself (who plays a minor role as Jessica's romantically embittered sister), and it's hard not to connect the dots between Jessica's fictional journey and Dunham's real life, in which a painful breakup sent her to London, where she met her now-husband, a musician. Perhaps that's why Too Much and Jess herself have such a true-to-life specificity that makes the show—and its main character—instantly relatable. She's a great big mess—a comic setpiece in the first episode involves her breaking into the house of ex Zev (Michael Zegan) and his new amour Wendy (Emily Ratajkowski)—and yet she's retained her wit and charm, and it's a delight to watch her recover from romantic distress and begin to thrive.

Dunham's writing is sharp and crackles with eccentric wit, but jokes are always rooted in Dunham's carefully drawn characters. We laugh with, not at, them. Though Jessica's life is chaotic, she's confident and knows her worth; her newly acquired love interest, Felix, is feckless and struggles with substance abuse, but he, too, has a healthy ego. In many ways, Too Much reads like a response to Emily in Paris, with a young woman experiencing an emotional crisis in a European city not her own. But while Emily is mannered and glossy, Too Much is disorderly, a little grubby, and more like real life, except everyone's funnier. Oh, and the guest stars? Rhea Perlman, Richard E. Grant, Andrew Rannells? Yes, please.