Girls continues to effortlessly tackle issues at the very heart of every young person's rite of passage with heroic fearlessness.
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With the dust settling over the results of the Golden Globes, we at The Edge take a look at the shows nominated for Best Television Comedy, and why they are worthy of the big award. This time, News Editor, Lewis Taplin, takes a look at one of the favourite shows which unfortunately just missed out, Girls.
Focusing on the lives of a group of four twenty-something women, Girls is the Lena Dunham-created drama-comedy which got the world talking back in 2012 with its heroic fearlessness. The beginnings of Girls was surrounded with discourse that questioned its originality with a central plot that echoed Sex and the City, the US phenomenon back in the late 90s and early 21st century. But Girls offers something quite different from what has transpired on our television screens before: a smart authenticity which proves itself far from Sex and the City‘s purposeful (albeit, clever) construction of female exploration. Rather than a show that overtly endeavours to tackle life’s issues, Girls just does, effortlessly manifesting into issues at the very heart of every young person’s rite of passage.
Without plunging the depths of a Lena Dunham-appreciation monologue, it is evidently down to Dunham’s masterfulness that Girls glows with spectacular grittiness. Her construction of each character skilfully means that we rarely slip into archetypes that are inserted into the narrative for comedic value, but we receive characters with various intricacies without predictable traits but with complexity. Along with some of the wittiest, impromptu but dramatic screenwriting, Girls tackles a whole array of tough issues that many would shy away from, shot in a naturalistic and explicit fashion. Dunham never shies away from providing the audience with life just as life is, conveying both beauty and darkness, comedy and drama, warts and all.
Girls, into its fourth season, is still a breath of fresh air because despite how hard others may try, only Dunham manages to unearth some of society’s most troubling topics whilst simultaneously illuminating the comedy in our mundane everyday.
