Why you should be watching Girls5eva
Review Overview
Character
8Comedy
8Music
8Ivan Radford | On 14, Mar 2024
Season 3 premieres on Netflix on 14th March 2024. This review is based on Season 1 and was originally published in December 2021.
“Gonna be famous 5eva, ’cause forever’s too short. Gonna be famous 3gether, ’cause that’s one more than together!” Those are the instantly iconic words of Girls5eva’s signature track, Famous 5eva – and if you’re already chuckling, then prepare to meet your new favourite pop sensation.
Created by Meredith Scardino and exec-produced by the seemingly bulletproof double act of Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, the music satire sounds exactly like you’d expect a music industry-set cousin of 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt to, and in no way is that a bad thing. The comedy follows a manufactured girl group who were famous – sort of – back in the 1990s. When their one-hit wonder is sampled by a rapper, Li’L Stinker, the chance to cash a very small royalty cheque is enough to tempt all four members of the band to try and mount a comeback.
And so we’re catch up with Dawn (Sara Bareilles), the sensible adult of the group, Summer (Busy Philipps), the chaotic blonde who’s unhappily married to boyband veteran Kevin (Andrew Rannells), Wickie (Renée Elise Goldsberry), who has built her own “fempire” on Instagram, and Gloria (Paula Pell), who is now a dentist. (The fifth, Ashley – played by Ashley Park in flashbacks – died in an infinity pool accident.)
What ensues is a typically searing commentary on the music industry, and showbiz in general, from the misogynistic way it dismisses women above a certain age to its generally degrading nature that exploits and embarrasses anyone willing to try and make it in the spotlight. The challenges that come with ageing, whether personal, professional and biological, are all laid bare with characteristically candid flippancy, which makes this a refreshingly honest ode to middle-aged female experiences – compared to And Just Like That or Cold Feet, it manages to balance its central focus on celebrating friendship and solidarity with a non-stop barrage of jokes that are thrown away with first-class, casual confidence.
The cast are superb, from Daniel Breaker as Dawn’s husband – “We should celebrate! Shall we start watching The Americans?” – to Stephen Colbert as Swedish pop guru Alf Musik and SNL scene-stealer Bowen Yang as Zander, a fan of Wickie. But the quartet at the show’s core are more than enough to keep your laughter track playing, mixing sight gags and verbal one-liners. They expertly convey the way that the friends help and encourage each other, whether it’s Summer’s growing awareness of her sham marriage, Dawn developing a more empowering stage persona or Gloria learning to balance her near-desperate medical ambitions with her near-desperate love for the girl group, but they do so with the lightest of touches, which means that the humour is driven by character and vice versa, so that the whole thing flows naturally and the pacing doesn’t let up – the way Wickie finishes off every line of dialogue with an unnecessary vocal flourish builds from an easy target to one of the best parts of the whole programme.
All this is held together with note-perfect music video parodies from Meredith Scardino and Jeff Richmond. Like Flight of the Conchords, they work as numbers in their own right, but also send up all manner of clichés and double standards with wit and energy. Even the song titles alone are funny, from New York Lonely Boy to Quit Flying Planes at My Heart. The result is a funny, fizzing eight-parter that sits alongside Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping as a modern music industry satire that grooves to an impossibly catchy beat, no matter how absurd its numerical nonsense gets. So, what are you waiting five?