Who run the world?

"I don’t want to freak you out, but I think that I may be the voice of my generation.” So says Hannah Horvath, the main character of HBO’s Girls, in the very first episode of the show. It’s a line that’s come back to haunt Lena Dunham, the show’s creator, writer and co-producer, who also plays the character of Hannah – in spite of the line being uttered by the naïve, self-involved character of her own creation, it’s often been attributed to Dunham herself. Fans believe the show is a raw, realistic picture of what it’s like to be fresh into adulthood in today’s society, while critics attack it for being vapid and self-indulgent. So, is Girls really the show that’s defining a whole new generation of young women?

The characters are often embarrassing, selfish, and at times just plain unlikeable – but that’s what makes them so relatable

On the face of it, Girls is nothing new: a show about four twenty-something women, living in New York City and dealing with jobs, men, and life in the city. The show’s first series opens with struggling writer Hannah being cut off by her parents, forcing her to abandon her unpaid internship and attempt to find a real job. Marnie, her best friend from college, is working at an art gallery while attempting to escape from the familiarity of her relationship with an overbearing boyfriend. Shoshanna, the youngest character, is a college student whose biggest secret is that she’s still a virgin, while her cousin, Jessa, is a free-spirited traveller with a penchant for wearing transparent clothes to her babysitting job.

So far, so Sex and the City? At first glance, it all seems pretty familiar, but when you get down to it, what differentiates Girls is its lack of pretension. These are women just out of college, struggling to find jobs and pay the rent (just how did Carrie Bradshaw afford that Manhattan apartment by writing one column a week, anyway?) and trying to figure out what comes next. There may be fewer Manolo Blahniks and Cosmopolitans, but what Girls lacks in glamour, it makes up for with realism. And while Sex and the City typically featured the characters dating a seemingly endless stream of men, the relationships in Girls are a lot more honest, from Hannah’s insecurity about her body during sex, to Marnie becoming bored with her long-term boyfriend, and Shoshanna’s struggle to find a man who won’t judge her for being a virgin. The male characters are just as interesting as the women: Hannah’s main love interest, Adam, may at first come across as a repulsive creep, but there’s more to him than meets the eye.

Other complaints, such as that of Dunham’s character being too overweight to realistically sleep with the men that she does, smacks more of pettiness and, perhaps, anger that Dunham, at only 26, is writing and directing a wildly successful show in a TV world ruled over mostly by men.

The characters are often embarrassing, selfish, and at times just plain unlikeable – but that’s what makes them so relatable. Refreshingly, these aren’t the air-brushed, glamorous women so often offered to us on TV. The show also isn’t afraid of dealing with difficult issues: unwanted pregnancy, mental illness, and, in one particularly excruciating scene set in an STI clinic, worrying about “the stuff that gets up around the side of condoms”. However, the show’s portrayal of female friendships – something desperately lacking in most TV shows – is where it really shines.

And then, there’s the backlash. The show has provoked an almost unprecedented level of criticism against Lena Dunham. Some of it is valid: for a show set in one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world, there’s a whole lot of white people and not muchelse. Other complaints, such as that of Dunham’s character being too overweight to realistically sleep with the men that she does, smacks more of pettiness and, perhaps, anger that Dunham, at only 26, is writing and directing a wildly successful show in a TV world ruled over mostly by men.

Girls is definitely a show worth watching, especially for anyone worrying about the “what comes next?” part of leaving university. It may not provide many answers, but it’ll give you plenty to think about.

(The second series of Girls is currently airing on Sky Atlantic)