• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, Yesterday

The secret sauce in the new Netflix series “Too Much” is the writing talent of Lena Dunham.

She created the show (with Luis Felber) and her scriptwriting (at least in the first episode the TV Blog previewed) is a pleasure to listen to.

The main character of “Too Much” is a woman in her mid-30s who moves from New York to London to take up a new life after a traumatic breakup.

“Too Much” is the third Dunham series since she shot to fame as the creator and star of “Girls” on HBO (2012-17). 

Her second series, “Camping” on HBO, was poorly received. It ran for eight episodes in 2018 and was then canceled.

With “Too Much,” Dunham, 39, returns to familiar territory, both literally and figuratively.

In its story about a woman facing the challenge of encroaching maturity, “Too Much” is like “Girls,” but here it is just “girl.”

The women of “Girls” were younger, however, and they lived in New York.

With just one “girl” at the center of “Too Much,” the character -- “Jessica,” played by Megan Stalter (above photo) -- is not dependent on the support of a group of friends, which is a sign of maturity.

Not that she has any friends, anyway. For her, London represents an opportunity to start over in a place where nobody knows her.

By the end of Episode One, she appears headed toward a new relationship with a pub musician, setting up what is likely the central storyline of the show.

Much of the material in “Too Much” is based on, or at least adapted from, Dunham’s own experience as a New Yorker who resettles in London.

A few years after “Girls” ended, she moved to London for work and stayed. To hear her tell it, it was the best decision of her life.

In The New Yorker in May, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/05/12/why-i-broke-up-with-new-york Dunham wrote about her decision to relocate and its root causes, which can be boiled down to this: Though she was born and raised in New York City, it finally dawned on her in her 30s that she never really liked the city. And off she went.

In “Too Much,” the character of Jessica aspires to be a director, but her career is going so badly that she is living in the suburban house of her grandmother (Rhea Perlman), along with her mother (Rita Wilson), sister (Dunham) and her young nephew. This is the life she seeks to escape.

As in “Girls,” Dunham delves deeply and candidly into sexual subjects and other, non-sexual bodily functions. Her writing on these topics is part of her brand.

And that’s not a criticism. In the hands of a writer like Dunham, all things are possible.

“Too Much” starts streaming on Thursday, July 10, on Netflix.