Beyond Measure: Lena Dunham's series that looks at 30 years old the way Girls looked at 20 years old

Lena Dunham is back just as we needed her to: with her own good series. Beyond Measure brings back the Lena Dunham of Girls , the full creator, not the one from Camping (part creator), Genera+ion (mentor to others), or Industry (star director). Beyond Measure features Dunham as director, screenwriter, producer, and actress. The series was co-created with Luis Felber , although we shouldn't hide one detail that, if Lena were a man and Luis a woman, would undoubtedly appear in the first paragraph of any article about Beyond Measure : Luis is Lena's husband. And this is his first credit as a screenwriter.

Lena Dunham will turn 40 next year. That detail isn't important. What is important is that before turning 30, she became one of the most important audiovisual creators : Girls was amazing when it premiered, back in 2012, and it remains so now.

It's inevitable to compare Girls with Beyond Measure . I could try not to, but I don't want to either. Because Beyond Measure also withstands the comparison. Among other things, because it consciously avoids it. Girls was a series about being 20; Beyond Measure is a series about being 30. Girls was about a gang of girls in New York; Beyond Measure revolves around a single woman in London. The most obvious connection between the two fictions is that the Jessica ( Megan Stalter ) of Beyond Measure could very well be a secondary character in Girls who, after a traumatic romantic failure in the United States, decides to put some distance between them and start over (oh, that crazy idea, that impossible thing, that pipe dream) in London. There, of course, she meets a boy, Felix ( Will Sharpe ). And that boy is wonderful. Too good to be true. But Felix is complicated. Too much, again. Of course, so is she. Jessica is, as Felix tells her, "everything and a little more." At that moment, it's incredibly annoying that the original title, Too Much, has been transformed into the less-than-inviting Spanish title. Although Netflix's search engine finds it anyway, Demasiado . I don't understand anything. Neither does Jessica.

Lena Dunham understands it. She understands writing series and pushing her boundaries while doing so. She already made it clear in Girls that she has no interest in aspirational characters, that she's a misguided aunt, and that it's the stories of misguided aunts she wants to tell. In Beyond Measure, she reserves one of the most ungrateful characters of recent times. A woman as despicable as she is understandable. A painting.

Without Measure isn't a painting. If anything, it's one of those that portray very large royal families. The cast of this series is simply dizzying. Lena Dunham gets the most diverse stars to play tiny characters. In return, she writes them as beautiful, complete, memorable ones. The list is powerful: Stephen Fry , Rita Wilson , Naomi Watts , David Johnsson , Adwoa Aboah , Adèle Exarchopoulos , Kit Harington , Andrew Rannells , Emily Ratajkowski , Andrew Scott ...

More Megan Stalter and Will Sharpe . Their charming but toxic relationship—American and British, fat and thin, chatty and intense—is not just that of two people from different cultures, but of two broken beings who perhaps believe (because why not believe in that) that together they can repair each other. Their wounds are deep; their energy, like that of any thirty-something without responsibilities, elevated and reckless. They "live in the moment." The quotation marks are ironic. In Beyond Measure , Lena Dunham doesn't need to use them. She writes much better.