Girls court cult status one laugh at a time
A REFRESHING, dark, self-deprecating comedy centred on friendships à la Sex and the City is on the cards. Intrigued?
You should be. It is created by and stars Lena Dunham, who also directed five of the 10 episodes. Did I mention that the life story of her lead character, Hannah Horvath, an aspiring writer from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, is drawn from personal experience?
Girls revolves around Horvath and her friends Marnie Michaels (Allison Williams), who is Horvath’s best friend and an art gallery assistant, and a virginal Shoshanna Shapiro (Zosia Mamet), who is the cousin of a bohemian Jessa Johannson (Jemima Kirke).
They embark on a roller-coaster journey, overcoming their personal and professional woes in the Big Apple. And then, hovering in the background, there is Adam Sackler (Adam Driver), a part-time carpenter-cum-actor and Hannah’s detached boyfriend.
To gain a better understanding of this show and why TV critics are applauding the novelty of the script and Dunham’s keep-itreal approach, a background check of the 26-year-old actress and filmmaker’s accomplishments is necessitated.
She staked her claim to fame after making her directorial debut with an indie offering, Tiny Furniture. It became the catalyst in her crossing paths with noted producer, writer and director Judd Apatow ( The Five-Year Engagement, Bridesmaids, Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin). By the way, he is the executive producer of this series.
In an interview with Entertainment.time.com, Dunham explains how they arrived at the title.
She says, “We were thinking a lot about what to title the show. Everything felt sort of cute and quippy in a way that the show isn’t, or tries not to be.
“Every title that I was coming up with had Girls in it some way, Girls Like Us to Those Crazy Girls! And now it has become the season of girl titles, which hadn’t happened yet when we began working. Then it was just Untitled Lena Dunham project for a while and I was sort of avoiding the title topic altogether.
“Then Judd called one day and he was like, we need to have a temporary title, what about just Girls? And it was as if he had found the meta title. He sort of distilled everything we’re doing down to an essence, down to its essence.
“And I think there’s something a little ironic about calling 24-year-old women ‘Girls’. It was a little cheeky. But, at the same time, I don’t think that they would self-identify as women yet. And the idea is that they are still kind of feeling like little girls, capitalising on their girlish charm to get what they want.”
Sex is as much a cornerstone of the comedy as the friendship. And there’s a lot of bad sex in the storyline.
But there is an array of themes that will resonate with viewers from diets to feelings of inadequacy to financial setbacks and romantic hurdles.
Make no mistake, Dunham is not trying to replace or be a carbon copy of Sex and the City. Nor is this series similar to Girlfriends.
Instead, viewers get to salivate over the delicious writing and transcendent characterisations that open the gateway to an utterly compelling offering that could attain cult status in the same way that Ugly Betty did – especially with a second season in the bag.