I Love LA review – Rachel Sennott’s HBO comedy finds itself but takes its time
The Shiva Baby and Bottoms star gets her own glossy sitcom which offers us a bumpy ride until it begins to take shape in the final stretchFor most of its...
By Adrian Horton · The Guardian Culture
The Shiva Baby and Bottoms star gets her own glossy sitcom which offers us a bumpy ride until it begins to take shape in the final stretch For most of its public existence, I Love LA, HBO’s new comedy series created by Rachel Sennott, was known online as Untitled Rachel Sennott Project . One wonders if they should have kept the temporary moniker, which befits the show better than its actual title; though I Love LA does go to Erewhon, it’s less a love letter to the city, nor a portrait of its precarious creative class, than a glossy, prestige brand bet on Sennott, an internet It Girl with a distinctly modern indistinction between actor and celebrity, and the popular, chaotic, very online sensibility that she embodies. The logic of the project flowed downhill: Sennott, one of the few internet-bred comedians with real movie mettle (see: Shiva Baby , I Used To Be Funny and Bottoms ), given eight whole episodes; HBO, continually losing younger viewers to YouTube, appealing to extremely online zillennials; the chattering class, starved for a truly good young-adult comedy – FX’s Adults , released earlier this year, didn’t cut it – eager for a successor to the messy, self-absorbed and totally absorbing women of Sex and the City, Girls and Insecure. All can agree: nothing gets people talking like a confident and maddening woman on TV. Continue reading...