Stream It Or Skip It?

Instead of making herself the center of her new series, Lena Dunham has decided to put Megan Stalter in the lead role. That’s smart for two reasons: One, she doesn’t have to carry the show’s creative load all by herself and two, Stalter has proven herself to be a brash and entertaining comedic presence. And in this new role written by Dunham, that presence is front and center.

TOO MUCH: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A woman in a zebra-striped jacket confidently walks across the Tower Bridge in London.

The Gist: Jessica Salmon (Megan Stalter) is the one walking across, talking in her head to a woman named Wendy Jones (Emily Ratajkowski) about how London is a city for different types of women, though the ones she thinks of are costume drama heroines or tough-as-nails crime drama beat cops.

Wendy is a real person; she’s dating Zev (Michael Zegen), Jess’ former boyfriend and the “love of my life.” We see Jess back in Brooklyn one month prior, drunkenly breaking into Zev’s apartment and confronting Zev and Wendy as they’re sleeping.

Before her move to London, Jess was living on Long Island in a “multi-generational, Grey Gardens hell of single women,” which includes her older sister, Nora South (Lena Dunham), her mother, Lois (Rita Wilson) and her grandmother Dottie (Rhea Perlman).

She works at a company that produces commercials for clients; during a shoot with Jessica Alba (herself), the actor/entrepreneur suggests that Jess run the ad shoot, which makes Jess panic. When her boss/soon-to-be-former-brother-in-law Jameson (Andrew Rannells) tells her about a project that she’d be good for in London. She thinks she can’t do it, but eventually changes her mind, and she and her nearly-hairless dog Astrid are off to London.

The first surprise when she gets there is that the “estate” she thought she was renting a flat from is just a dreary apartment block. The first person she meets is Gaz (Dean-Charles Chapman), a neighbor who’s a bit too squirrely for her taste. After seeing a video where Zev and Wendy get engaged, she decides to go to a pub by herself. This is where she meets Felix Remen (Will Sharpe), who is singing on-stage. When they meet at the bar, they definitely hit it off, and she takes him back to her flat. At first, he rebuffs her advances, saying he’s dating someone, but he then does something that tells Jess that he’s worth pursuing.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Too Much is similar to recent shows where a single thirty- or fortysomething almost gives up on love and then finds it. We’re talking about shows like Survival Of The Thickest, How To Die Alone, and Shrill.

Our Take: Lena Dunham and her husband Luis Felber co-created Too Much (Dunham directed all of the episodes). Is this based on how they met and fell for each other? Maybe a little bit. But Stalter takes Dunham and Felber’s story and makes it her own via a performance that balances vulnerability and insanity in a style that not many other people could pull off.

Those of us familiar with Stalter from Hacks might just see the loonier side of her comedic style. That is definitely there, but toned down from the level she achieves as Kayla on the HBO Max hit. When we see Jess bashing the glass in her ex’s front door with a gnome and standing in front of him and his new girlfriend like it’s natural, we buy into the idea that she’s so distraught over her breakup that she’d do something so outlandish (the fact that she didn’t get arrested for it was a bit strange, though).

The way Stalter plays Jess’ vulnerability is definitely different than other actors might. Jess’ vulnerability is loud and brash and demands your attention, but Stalter is able to show that brashness while also showing that Jess is feeling lost at this juncture of her life. As her faltering romance with the very casual Felix continues, perhaps some of that brashness will subside, but we hope not too much.

The rest of the first episode is a bit of a comedic jumble. It feels like the show wants to cram as many high-profile guest appearances as possible into its episodes, even in roles that may only be a scene or two. And, as per Dunham’s style, there are references and jokes that aren’t germane to the story we’re watching, but are jammed in because they’re funny, so why not?

While that style has annoyed us in the past — and Dunham isn’t the only writer who falls victim to this — Stalter’s presence ameliorates that annoyance. We want to see Jess make it work with Felix. It helps that Sharpe is playing Felix as a laid-back guy who has his own quirks, someone who might have been in a classic Britcom if he wasn’t already a musician. The more Dunham stays with their relationship and cuts out trying to cram in jokes about everything else in Jess’ world, the better the show will be.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.

Parting Shot: Jess sees Felix come back to her flat — she’s being “cooled off” by EMTs in her bathtub after she accidentally set her nightgown on fire, triggering a panic attack — and in her mental letter to Wendy, she says she’s found “My Mr. Darcy, my Rochester, my Alan Rickman, my… Felix!”

Sleeper Star: Feels like we’ve been seeing Rhea Perlman everywhere these days, and she’s funny in her brief scenes as Jess’ grandmother Dottie.

Most Pilot-y Line: “Nobody’s a fucking influencer in the works of Jane Austen,” Jess says in her inner monologue as she watches Sense & Sensibility.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Too Much is a bit of a messy show, much like its main character. But Stalter is a lot of fun to watch, and we tend to forget about the show’s messiness during her funniest and most vulnerable scenes.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.