---
title: "Girls"
year: 2012
kind: "series"
canonical: "https://film.one/tv/girls"
fi1m_score: 82
critics_score: 80
critics_reviews: 6
published: "2026-09-17T02:05:37.188131+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-17T02:05:50.207495+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Girls (2012)

Created by Lena Dunham · 28m · MPA TV-MA · Drama, Comedy

**Fi1m score: 82** · Critics 80 from 6 reviews

*In a sentence:* Four twentysomethings in Brooklyn, none of whom you would lend money to, all of whom you would ring back

> Lena Dunham’s comedy about four women adrift in Brooklyn is sharp, unsparing and often uncomfortable to sit through, which is the point. Its world is small and the middle seasons wander, but the best episodes are as honest as television gets.

## Synopsis

Brooklyn, 2012. Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham), two years out of college and working an unpaid internship while she writes a book of essays, is taken to dinner by her parents Tad (Peter Scolari) and Loreen (Becky Ann Baker) and told the money stops now. She goes home to the flat she shares with Marnie Michaels (Allison Williams), who has a proper job and a devoted boyfriend, Charlie Dattolo (Christopher Abbott), whom she can no longer bear to be touched by. Hannah’s own arrangement is with Adam Sackler (Adam Driver), who builds things out of wood in his flat and rarely answers his phone. Jessa Johansson (Jemima Kirke) blows in from abroad and moves in with her cousin Shoshanna Shapiro (Zosia Mamet), who talks very fast and is still a virgin.

## Review

Hannah Horvath tells her parents, over the dinner at which they cut her off, that she thinks she may be the voice of her generation, or at least a voice of a generation. She is high when she says it. Lena Dunham, who created the series, writes and directs much of it and plays Hannah, spends six seasons and 62 episodes making sure we hear the joke and never quite lose sight of the ambition underneath. That is the whole method of *Girls*. It lets its four women be ridiculous and asks us to keep caring anyway.

It is very good, and we would put its best half-hours against any comedy of the past twenty years. It is also, for long stretches, hard to spend time with, and that is a description, not a complaint. The sex was what most critics remarked on at the time, and rightly, though not because there is a great deal of it. It is that Dunham and her directors, Jesse Peretz and Richard Shepard among them, shoot it the way the rest of the show is shot: in the same light, from the same middle distance, with nobody arranged to look good. We looked at the floor during the first scene between Hannah and Adam Sackler, and then realised we had never seen anything on television that was that accurate about what a bad arrangement between two people looks like from the inside.

Tim Ives photographs Brooklyn without a glow. The flats, dressed by production designer Judy Becker, have radiators, mismatched chairs and one good lamp, and they look rented rather than art-directed, which is harder than it sounds. Nat Sanders and Joi McMillon cut conversations so that the pause after a stupid remark runs a beat longer than is comfortable. Most comedies would cut to the reaction. This one stays on the person who said it.

Adam Driver is the discovery. Adam Sackler is written as the worst sort of boyfriend, unreachable and odd, and Driver plays him as a man who is simply concentrating on something else, so that when his attention does land on Hannah it is frightening in its completeness. Zosia Mamet takes Shoshanna, who could have been one joke about a girl who talks fast, and gives her a spine. Alex Karpovsky’s Ray Ploshansky, older than everyone and running a coffee shop he despises, is the show’s conscience and its most reliably funny man. Allison Williams has the hardest job: Marnie is vain and controlling, and Williams never once winks at us about it.

The scenes that got past our guard were the ones with the parents. Peter Scolari and Becky Ann Baker play Tad and Loreen Horvath as two decent people who have run out of ideas, and a late strand involving Tad, which we will not describe, moved us more than anything the four women do. That is a criticism of sorts. The show is more interested in the people around its heroines than it always admits.

The flaws are structural. The world is small: four white women with parents who can, if pressed, pay the rent, and the show’s occasional attempts to notice this are the least convincing things in it. The middle seasons wander. Marnie’s music career with Desi Harperin (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) is tiresome the first time and no better the third, and Jessa, whom Jemima Kirke plays with real charm, is sent on detours the writers plainly did not know how to end. Seasons of ten and twelve episodes, at 28 minutes each, should have no room for filler. Some of these do.

The best of *Girls* is in its standalone episodes, in which Hannah is shut in a room with one other person and the show becomes a small, exact two-hander. Several of these are directed by Richard Shepard, and they are where the writing, by Dunham with Jenni Konner and a staff that included Judd Apatow and Bruce Eric Kaplan, is at its plainest and most painful. Most critics rate the series about where we do, and we think the ones who found it merely coarse missed how carefully the coarseness is placed.

It is an 18 certificate and earns it in the first ten minutes. Watch a season at a time rather than the lot at once. These people are exhausting in the way real friends of that age are exhausting, and we liked them more with a week between visits.

*Fi1m score 82, published 17 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

The reviews are uniformly positive. Every critic lands on the same word: honest. The praise clusters on Dunham’s writing, which most critics find true to how twentysomethings in New York talk, fumble and fail at adulthood, rather than a glossy version of it. The sex scenes come up repeatedly, singled out for being awkward and unflattering in a way critics take as a virtue. Several reviews set the show against Sex and the City and find it the more real of the two.

The spread runs from warm to warmer, with The Hollywood Reporter the most enthusiastic by some distance. Such reservations as there are concern the characters rather than the craft: Variety finds them self-absorbed and self-indulgent, and IndieWire calls the pilot coarse, though both still recommend it. The Guardian notes the ongoing argument over how narrow the show’s world is and who it leaves out, without letting that dent its enjoyment. Nobody dissents.

### Reviews we read (6)

- **The Hollywood Reporter**, Tim Goodman (95/100, inferred): The critic calls the series a brilliant gem and one of the most original, spot-on series in recent memory, praising Dunham's unique vision and the honest, nuanced portrayal of young women's lives and friendships. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/review-girls-is-brilliant-gem-298379/)
- **The Times**, AA Gill (85/100, inferred): The critic praises the show's bold, bright and real writing that captures life remembered rather than exaggerated, highlighting its graphic and fumblingly true depiction of youthful sex and distinction from Sex and the City. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/bold-slice-of-life-from-the-big-apple-l2lqrrl3r9r)
- **The Guardian**, Lucy Mangan (80/100, inferred): The critic finds the show hilarious and real in its portrayal of twentysomethings struggling with adulthood in New York. She notes its authentic feel compared to Sex and the City while acknowledging debates over its scope and representation. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2012/oct/22/girls-tv-review)
- **Variety**, Brian Lowry (80/100, inferred): The critic notes the characters are self-absorbed and self-indulgent but praises the series as fresh, honest and raw, calling it a voice worth hearing on HBO. [Read](https://variety.com/2012/tv/reviews/girls-1117947363/)
- **IndieWire**, Maggie Lange (70/100, inferred): The critic finds the pilot coarse yet sensitive and promising overall. She singles out the realistic, awkward portrayal of young women's lives and relationships for praise. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/shows/sex-the-gritty-lena-dunhams-girls-pilot-is-coarse-sensitive-and-promising-181878/)
- **Vulture**, Matt Zoller Seitz (70/100, inferred): The critic calls the series a success for finding truth in its characters and setting. She singles out the precise, aesthetically modest depiction of privileged yet petty young women and their awkward, real sex scenes for praise. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/2012/04/tv-review-girls.html)

## Details

- **Created by:** Lena Dunham
- **Creator:** Lena Dunham
- **Director:** Jamie Babbit, Lena Dunham, Richard Shepard, Jesse Peretz, Tricia Brock, Jenni Konner
- **Writer:** Jenni Konner, Lena Dunham, Judd Apatow, Deborah Schoeneman, Steven Rubinshteyn, Dan Sterling, Sarah Heyward, Bruce Eric Kaplan
- **Cinematography:** Tim Ives
- **Editor:** Nat Sanders, Joi McMillon
- **Production design:** Judy Becker
- **Producer:** Jesse Peretz, Regina Heyman, Peter Phillips
- **Cast:** Lena Dunham as Hannah Horvath; Allison Williams as Marnie Michaels; Zosia Mamet as Shoshanna Shapiro; Alex Karpovsky as Ray Ploshansky; Jemima Kirke as Jessa Johansson; Andrew Rannells as Elijah Krantz; Christopher Abbott as Charlie Dattolo; Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Desi Harperin
- **Runtime:** 28m
- **Certificate (MPA):** TV-MA
- **Release (the US):** 15 April 2012
- **Genres:** Drama, Comedy

## Where to watch in the US

- HBO Max: streaming
- Amazon Prime Video: add-on
- The Roku Channel: add-on, hd
- Hulu: add-on, hd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy, hd

*Checked 2026-09-17.*

Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IS, IT, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, TH, TR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *Fleabag* (2016), Fi1m 90: A London woman looks straight at us while making the same mistakes, faster and funnier. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/fleabag.md)
- *Frances Ha* (2012), Fi1m 82: Greta Gerwig in black and white, broke in Brooklyn, losing her best friend to a boyfriend. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/frances-ha.md)
- *Insecure* (2016), Fi1m 81: Issa Rae’s Los Angeles comedy about a friendship that is harder work than any relationship. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/insecure.md)
- *Please Like Me* (2013): Josh Thomas’s Melbourne series, gentler than Girls and every bit as honest about bad flats.
- *Tiny Furniture* (2010): Dunham’s first film, made in her mother’s loft, with the same wince and less money.

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/girls