The first season of Girls actually came out last year in both the UK and the US – the second season is due to start again in the US on 13th January. I had never watched it but had heard a huge amount about the show as it completely divided critics – some thought it was gritty and realistic and others thought it was over-hyped and racist (due to an almost completely white cast).
The show follows four girls in their 20s, living in New York: Hannah, Marnie, Jessa and Shoshanna. They are facing the problems that every girl has to face like being broke and boys being difficult!
I decided I would give it a go, and personally – I loved it. I watched the entire first season in two days (it was the Christmas holiday and I was procrastinating from getting any actual work done).
The show is realistic in the sense that it isn’t glamorous at all. The girls fight with each other, they don’t have perfect hair/bodies/wardrobes, they have horrible sex with rubbish boyfriends…all of this makes it really refreshing to watch. It made me feel a lot better about my own life for one, and has a number of relatable scenes in it that in many ways are reassuring, such as Hannah going to get checked for STDs, or Marnie’s awkward break-up with the boyfriend that she has begun to hate. I would really recommend this show to any girls (sounds like a terrible pun, its not, I just wouldn’t recommend it to most of my male friends because I’m not sure they’d appreciate a lot of it) who liked Sex and The City but who don’t want to feel depressed about their lack of designer wardrobe/absence of a model perfect body – this is the show for you!
The other refreshing thing about the show is that the character’s aren’t always likeable – I sometimes found myself frustrated by the life choices they made, and Hannah’s selfishness also really irritated me. The only character that at no point did I find annoying was Shoshanna, who is just adorable. The fact that I wasn’t completely bowled over by the characters actually made the show more interesting to watch, and because they were making choices that I wouldn’t have made, I couldn’t wait to see the next episode to see how things turned out. Here is the trailer for season one:
Give it a look, and then go and watch the first series!
