Too Much premieres July 10 on Netflix.
By Elazar Abrahams
Lena Dunham’s Too Much is a frustrating watch, not because it has nothing to say, but because it doesn’t seem to say anything new. Megan Stalter stars as Jessica, a New Yorker who flees to London after a breakup and falls into a wildly toxic romance with Felix, played by Will Sharpe. There’s an arc here, and the show absolutely does follow through on its central relationship, but getting to the end feels like a slog. There’s emotional payoff, yes, but it doesn’t feel worth the queasy, unpleasant path to get there.
It’s not that unlikable characters are a problem. Dunham has always trafficked in flawed people, and Girls remains a benchmark for messy millennial storytelling. But there’s a difference between characters who are grating and characters who are hollow. In Girls, even when you couldn’t stand Hannah, you could at least connect with Shoshanna or Marnie or Jessa in another scene. Here, every character feels designed to repel, and the dynamics are so lopsided that it’s hard to care what happens to anyone. Megan Stalter is a naturally funny, emotionally generous performer, and it’s great to see her get a starring role, but even her rawness can’t elevate the material when so much of it is steeped in one-note dysfunction.
London, as a setting, is barely present. While Dunham may draw a bit from her own move across the Atlantic, Too Much doesn’t have the same personal urgency or specificity that made Girls pop. The show wants to explore the chaos of starting over, but the storytelling feels tired. Dunham’s commentary on millennial life was sharp and fresh back in 2013. Over a decade later, it feels like she’s still having the same conversations, only now they’re less funny, more exhausting, and stripped of the cultural bite they once had.
Even frequent appearances from Emily Ratajkowski can’t save this thing. The episodes drag, the jokes don’t land, and the entire series comes off like a well-funded creative reset that needed a lot more rewriting. Too Much is far from unwatchable, but it’s the kind of show you get through mostly out of curiosity, not genuine enjoyment. Whatever Dunham is trying to say here, it’s hard not to feel like she already said it better years ago.
I give Too Much’s first season a C-.
TV and City 