Jessica and Felix’s love story is ending with the duo’s fairytale wedding — at least for now. Lena Dunham‘s romantic comedy series Too Much, starring Meg Stalter and Will Sharpe, will not be back for a second season on Netflix.
Dunham, who co-created the show with her husband, British musician Luis Ferber, inspired by their real-life romance, addressed Too Much‘s future at a FYC panel last week.
“Our intention was always to make Too Much as a limited series,” she said. “It was meant to feel like a classic transatlantic love story but with time to really dig into the complexities that a film doesn’t have the space for.”
Too Much stars Hacks standout Stalter as Jessica, a New York workaholic in her mid-30s who, reeling from a broken relationship that she thought would last forever, takes a job in London, where she plans to live a life of solitude like a Bronte sister. But when she meets struggling indie musician Felix (Sharpe) – a walking series of red flags – she finds that their unusual connection is impossible to ignore, even as it creates more problems than it solves.
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After a lot of ups and downs — and a breakup — the couple reconciles and gets married in the Season 1 finale.
“Of course I fell fully in love with Meg and Will’s dynamic and started imagining what the rest of their characters’ lives together could look like — Felix and Jess have a baby! Felix and Jess are on the first ship to populate Mars!,” Dunham said on the panel. “But as Luis and I sat with what we made, we realized we had told the story. It ends with a wedding. There’s even a little Easter egg, which is that within the final scene you can hear me yell ‘cut!’ We had done what we needed to do, and part of the job is knowing when to park it.”
Dunham didn’t close the door completely on a possible follow-up.
“Who knows — maybe there will be a time down the line when it feels right to check in on them again,” she said. “But right now I’m pulling a Mary Poppins and heading on to the next (imaginary) family that needs me.”
Too Much, which featured an all-star recurring cast that included Dunham, Rhea Perlman, Andrew Rannells, Rita Wilson, Emily Ratajkowski, Naomi Watts and Richard E. Grant, was well received by critics, scoring 79% on Rotten Tomatoes. It didn’t find a broad audience, breaking into Netflix’s Global Top 10 for English-language series once in its first full week, logging 1.9 million views at No. 10.
Netflix remains in business with Dunham who has a deal at the streamer for her production company Good Thing Going. Additionally, she is believed to be gearing up to do a feature next summer.
The streamer has had several strong comedy launches over the past year, with shows like Nobody Wants This, Man On the Inside and Running Point returning for second seasons.
Dunham wrote and directed Too Much which she executive produced with Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Michael P. Cohen, Surian Fletcher-Jones and Bruce Eric Kaplan. Camilla Bray served as producer. The series hailed from A Working Title Television and Good Thing Going Productions. Universal International Studios, a division of Universal Studio Group, was the studio.