Too Much Review
Director: Lena Dunham
Date Created: 2025-07-10 18:47
2.5
Too Much Review: Directed and written by Lena Dunham, this 10-episode Netflix limited series features Megan Stalter as Jessica, Will Sharpe as Felix, Antonio Aakeel as Raven, Emily Piggford as Alaia, Aylin Scott as Cheryl and others. The episodes range from 35–40 minutes and follow the complicated emotional life of a New Yorker who starts anew in London, but ends up entangled in a crazy romance.
Netflix’s Too Much follows thirtysomething New Yorker Jessica as she navigates the aftermath of a messy relationship breakup. Far from getting over it at home, she takes the extreme step of quitting her job in New York to move to London for a new one so that she can lead a drama-free life. But things have other plans. She meets Felix, a free-living musician with a past himself, and the two become entangled in a complicated relationship. The series attempts to map out the highs and lows of love in today’s time, the disorientation of cultures, and identity, but much of it fails to coalesce.
Too Much Review
I approached the Too Much series with expectation, particularly since Lena Dunham has a reputation for unapologetic writing. Her show Girls had a love-hate aspect to it, and I wanted to see if this show was going to do something different, but after watching, I felt more tired than satisfied.
The hardest for me was the characters. Our protagonist, Jessica, is built up as a woman who is always talking about how she feels, but never actually matures. She is narcissistic with her choices, pushes others away from her, and always finds a way to make everything a matter of herself in some way. Felix isn’t doing much better either—he’s charming at first, then becomes a different character with red flags. The two of them combined created their relationship to seem less like a ride and more like a bad communication pattern and unhealthy trends.
One of the things that did stand out most, in a bad way, was the dialogue. The dialogue on the show is too stilted, dragged out, and exhausting. There were times when I caught myself zoning out because the characters were dancing around the issue without ever really saying anything significant. The prose attempts to be clever and evocative but winds up sounding whiny and over-analysed. It is difficult to grow attached to characters when every scene feels like an interminable therapy session without any real aha. moment.
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But there are some things the show does get right. I liked the way it portrayed London—not the tourist districts, but the everyday life of the city, the local culture, and the quirky characters. The show gets at the feeling of being foreign in a foreign land, or at least the little cultural gaffes between Americans and Brits. Those were easy to relate to and enjoyable.
I also loved the way that the show approached intimacy with real bodies. It’s not going to use ideal faces or glossy intimate scenes. Rather, it shows love and lust through the people who look like the rest of us. And in doing so, there was some of the show that was real and courageous, even though the characters themselves weren’t necessarily likeable.
Lena Dunham’s Too Much does aspire to be a show that broaches large questions—heartbreak, identity, feminism, even cross-cultural courtship. But it can’t get its act together or get the questions straight. The characters are so self-absorbed that whatever underlying message there is gets lost in their emotional débris.
Even the supporting actors, who could have added depth, barely register. And when some celebrity names do make cameo roles, like Michael Caine, they are included to be distracting and add nothing valuable to the plot.
At times, I felt the show would finally turn around and get me. Perhaps Jessica would pull herself together. Perhaps Felix would show another side. Perhaps the show would become something substantial. But no, the show continues to go round and round in the same cycle of emotional drama, never really saying anything. It all just started to feel, you know, too much.
Megan Stalter gives a sincere performance, and there are some laugh-out-loud bits, but the tone of the show tends to be inconsistent. It attempts to be romantic and funny and raw and smart all at once—and becomes exhausting rather than so.
Netflix Too Much Review: Summing Up
Netflix’s Too Much is not an awful show, but it is not the type of show that I would ever watch on a regular basis. It has some draw, a beautiful setting, and an audacious approach to romance and body image. It trips up in pacing, character development, and emotional balance. It has much to say about self-discovery, but fails to always demonstrate it.
Too Much 2025 is streaming on Netflix.
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