I really wanted to love this. I loved Girls. I really felt Lena Dunham was the voice of a generation and I wanted this to be every bit as good. But it wasn't. In fact it was bad, REALLY BAD. Like student film or GCSE drama devised piece bad.
Firstly, Dunham can't write British dialogue at all, or British characters. All the British characters lacked well, character, and they also lacked nuance, originality and believability. They were all tired tropes. Some of their dialogue was just awful. Especially in the work scenes. Poor Richard E Grant did his best with terrible dialogue but he had nothing to work with. None of the work team characters came across like any real British person or spoke like any real British person. You could see they knew the show was going to flop.
Add to that the two leads were just unlikeable (and I've never disliked Will Sharpe in anything but this loser musician character is just plain unlikeable and you could see Sharpe's heart wasn't;t really in it) and the female lead character is both unlikeable and irritating in the extreme. It was hard to care about them, their romance or anything really. They also had zero chemistry which didn't help.
The show is also unbelievably slow and devoid of any plot. So no character, no plot, no originality and absolutely no Com in the Rom. I didn't laugh once. Didn't even crack a smile.
The whole thing felt off, like a mish mash of Baby Reindeer, Notting Hill and wanting to be but totally failing to be the brilliant Shrill. But Shrill had charm, nuance, actual comedy and pulled the heart strings. And a lead actress who was incredibly watchable. This does nothing. Didn't make me feel anything except infuriated about wasting my time watching it!
I'm sure off the back of the success of Girls Netflix just said off you go Lena, make whatever you want to make and never gave a single note. They must be regretting that now.
Netflix have had a string of British hits lately but this sadly is not one of them.
