Lena Dunham has set a new romantic comedy series at Netflix, with Megan Stalter & Will Sharpe set to star, Deadline has confirmed. The 10-episode Too Much is the first series created by Dunham since HBO’s Camping, which aired for one season in 2018. Production will begin in the UK in 2024.
From Dunham and her husband Luis Felber, Too Much, set in London, follows Jessica (Stalter), a New York workaholic in her mid-30s who is reeling from a broken relationship that she thought would last forever and slowly isolating everyone she knows. When every block in New York tells a story of her own bad behavior, the only solution is to take a job in London, where she plans to live a life of solitude like a Brontë sister. But when she meets Felix (Sharpe) — who is less Hugh Grant in “Notting Hill” and more Hugh Grant’s drunken roommate — she finds that their unusual connection is impossible to ignore, even as it creates more problems than it solves. Now they have to ask themselves: Do Americans and Brits actually speak the same language? The series is an ex-pat rom-com for the disillusioned who wonder if true love is still possible, but sincerely hope that it is.
“This is a show that is very close to my heart – created with my husband Luis, cast with my favourite actors – the geniuses that are Meg and Will, along with a bevy of friends – and partnering again with Working Title, who are behind the romantic comedies that formed me,” said Dunham. “Netflix has been so deeply supportive of the vision, which is to create a romantic comedy that makes us root for love, brings joy but also has the jagged edges of life.”
Official character descriptions per Netflix: “If you’d met Jessica ten years ago, you would have been blinded by her inner light — but life has taken her on a walkabout, when she thought she was just taking a quick jog. Felix upends all her expectations, but it turns out that trusting someone is scarier than trusting no one. Felix is a very different kind of 35 – acting eternally 18, dressed like a punk elf, running as fast as he can from a trauma he can’t name, sleeping with every woman who stays in the bar past closing time and waking up wondering why he can’t just enjoy a night alone. Born in the U.K. and raised between English boarding schools and his extended family in Japan, he feels neither here nor there. Making music is his only consolation — music that no one listens to.”
Too Much is written and directed by Dunham with original music by Felber. Dunham and Felber executive produce alongside Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Michael P. Cohen, Surian Fletcher-Jones and Bruce Eric Kaplan, with Camilla Bray as producer. Too Much is produced by Universal International Studios’ Working Title Television as well as Dunham’s Good Thing Going banner.
