Lena Dunham's highly personal, chaotic romantic comedy series has crash-landed on Netflix. Too Much returns to the same kind of thematic territory as Girls, the cult series often dubbed the ‘millennial Sex & The City’, and the project Lena has been best known for. This time, however, the story takes place not in Brooklyn, but London. This series will also draw comparisons with SATC, especially as the main character has a Carrie Bradshaw-esque voiceover throughout, and there are shades of Bridget Jones and Fleabag in there too. Nonetheless Too Much is very much its own being; awkward, hilarious and off-kilter but ultimately very touching. The series also pays tribute to lots of classic romantic comedies of the past, through certain easter-egg-laden scenes and location choices.
What is Too Much about?
The series' plot is loosely inspired by Lena's life after she moved to London, where she subsequently met her now-husband, musician Luis Felber. The pair have co-written the incisively funny script together, which lends it a particularly candid and organic feel. Megan Stalter, known for her role in Hacks, and Will Sharpe, seen in the Sicilian series of The White Lotus, play the two leads. Stalter's Jessica has just had the break up of all break ups, and to make matters worse, her ex's new fiancée is the beautiful, seemingly perfect influencer Wendy (Emily Ratajkowski). She moves to London to start afresh in her career as a producer of TV commercials, hoping to land in the England of her 90s rom-com/Austen adaptation fantasies, but instead finds herself moving into an East London council flat and shortly after, meeting troubled musician Felix (Sharpe), with whom she has an instant spark.
Who is in Too Much?
Apart from Stalter, Sharpe and Ratajkowski, the cast is absolutely stacked with top tier talent and bursting at the seams with incredible cameos, from the hilarious to the completely left field. Others characters in the ensemble include Jessica's mother, played by Rita Wilson, and her older sister Nora, played by Lena herself. Michael Zegan plays Jessica's manipulative ex-partner Zev back in New York, and Richard E. Grant is Jonno, Jessica's boss in the UK. There are small roles and appearances for everyone from Stephen Fry, Naomi Watts, Jennifer Saunders and Andrew Scott (playing the antithesis of the Hot Priest), to model Adwoa Aboah, legendary DJ Don Letts, Rita Ora and Carlos O'Connell, a member of the band Fontaines D.C. Another key member of the cast, despite having no lines, is Jessica's beloved hairless dog Astrid, frequently seen dressed up in frilly gowns.
Too Much filming locations
The show opens in New York, and we see the city in flashbacks to her relationship with Zev, or moments showing Jessica's rambunctious family life. London, however, is the primary setting, and as an integral part of Jessica's journey, becomes a character in itself. In another writer's hands, this fish-out-of-water storyline of an American moving to London might involve a lot of the stereotypical touristy locations of the city. But apart from the inevitable shot of Jessica walking down Tower Bridge soon after arriving in the city (which is also a Bridget Jones's Diary easter egg), Too Much purposely avoids falling into this trap and instead shows the shabbiness and the charm of the spots that Londoners actually frequent, from the pubs and parks to the M25.
Lena's husband Luis has explained that ‘we both liked the idea of something that’s weighted and earthed in the London world that I know so well… there are a few shots of Buckingham Palace and places like that, and the door in Notting Hill, because that creates a world and also it works because we’re seeing it from Jess’s perspective. But a lot of the locations are much grittier parts of London, and it makes me smile when Jess arrives in Hackney, which is so far from what she’s expecting.’ Nick Marshall, who was the supervising location manager on the series, outlines how the London of the show needed ‘its own quirkiness, so that Jessica can get to grips with the reality of what coming to London is, rather than fulfilling her fantasy of London.’ Read on to discover more about the specific locations where Too Much unfolds.
Much of the show plays out in and around east London. The exterior of the block of flats where Jessica moves to is St Peter's Estate in Hackney. The interior, however, was a studio set, as the real flat would have been too small and restrictive to fit in all the lights and cameras necessary for shooting.
Felix's band play a gig at ‘Donkey Fest’ at the delightfully charming Hackney City Farm in one episode, which Nick calls ‘a real coup’ to access for filming: ‘it did feel like a little bit of a minefield to make it happen. But amazingly, Hackney City Farm were completely on board, really enthusiastic, incredibly helpful in terms of the management of their animals, keeping the noisy ducks out of the way, things like that’.
Shoreditch Town Hall was recycled for various locations throughout the series, from a hospital to the vets. Nick describes how ‘the hospital ward needed to feel almost sort of Victorian, slightly heightened and slightly different… so it was a good fit for for what the script required and what the director required.’
Other east London locations in the series include the café on Lauriston Street where Jessica and Wendy have a heart-to-heart at the end of the series, and Felix's friend Polly's (Adèle Exarchopoulos) glassy and modern house in De Beauvoir Town.
Jessica first lays eyes on Felix when he is performing at The Ivy House in Nunhead, south east London. This specific pub was in the original script as it ‘has great sentimental value to both Lena and Luis’ according to Nick. Luis has said that 'the place that Jessica and Felix meet was actually the first club that I ever played at'. He wrote the songs for the show, but Will Sharpe sung and performed them (he has also been flexing his musical muscles preparing to play Mozart in a new TV series). Another local spot where Felix's band play is at Dash The Henge record shop in Camberwell.
The pastel houses of this west London neighbourhood can be seen when Jessica takes Felix to her posh boss's house for dinner. This was a private house that was hired out for filming both the interior and exterior. The iconic blue door at 280 Westbourne Park Road from Notting Hill can also be spotted earlier in the episode as Jessica poses for a photo outside it, just as countless others have over the years since the film's release.
The streets of Maida Vale and Soho, Regent's Canal, and Parliament Hill are other places in London that were used for filming.
The opulent, stately home where the lavish wedding of Felix's school friend takes place is at Englefield, near Reading. This location was selected by Nick and was perhaps his favourite of the series. He says 'I knew immediately that that location ticked all the boxes. And even though we did offer up some other locations, it was clear from the outset that Englefield Estate was always going to be the standout option, particularly because it's such a magnificent property'. Almost the whole episode happens there and the scale of the wedding set-up was particularly immense, with a huge amount of extras needed on set; ‘to see all that come together was very gratifying’, he adds. The wedding setting of the episode is a nod to another classic Richard Curtis rom-com, Four Weddings and a Funeral.
The big Christmas ad that Jessica is producing is to be directed by Andrew Scott's narcissistic and difficult director character. The team go location scouting in the quaint, typically English village of Hambleden in Buckinghamshire, one of Nick's ‘favourite villages’, which Scott's character ultimately decides is too quaint for his high-concept ad. So Nick had the interesting, self-reflexive task of having to location scout for a scene depicting his exact job on-screen.
The Grade I-listed Tudor manor house near Windsor makes an appearance as the inn where the characters stay during their location recce. Many other films and series have been shot at Dorney Court, from Bridgerton to Agatha Christie adaptations.
This historic pub is over 900 years old, thought to be one of the oldest in the country. It is the pub that Jessica and Andrew Scott's characters head to for a drink after their day of location scouting. The charmingly preserved interiors have also been seen in Hot Fuzz, The Theory of Everything and last year's Mary & George series.
Other scenes outside of London were filmed at private residences in Oxfordshire and Hayes for flashbacks to Felix's grand childhood home and his parents' current, more ordinary house that he goes to visit in one episode.
