Too Much tells the story of Jessica (Megan Stalter, Hacks), who hears she is “too much” many times throughout the series. She seems aware of this but does not really know how to be “less.” After seven years in a troubled relationship with Zane (Michael Zeigen, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), he leaves her for a knitting influencer (Emily Ratajkowski, model and celebrity in her own right).
The series includes flashbacks of Jessica and Zane’s relationship, even an episode where Zane is on the psychologist’s couch. The series presents Jessica’s side of the story, and Zane comes off very badly.
Jessica, broken, gets a chance to travel to England to work as a producer, a role she excels in despite being portrayed as an emotionally fragile and dysfunctional person. She is addicted to British dramas, so when she arrives, she imagines people in period costumes as if taken from another Jane Austen adaptation. Unfortunately, she discovers (how she did not know this as a devoted Anglophile is unclear) that when Brits say “Estate,” they do not mean a grand mansion but a house in a housing development. On the first night, in the bathrooms of a dim bar, she meets Felix (Will Sharp, The White Lotus), a particularly troubled independent musician. Jessica and Felix are “self-destructive twins,” and their love story is full of dramatic scenes, starting when Jessica accidentally sets herself on fire and Felix comes to save her.
Like in Ted Lasso, there is much play on the difference between British and American traits. Jessica’s nephew tells her “Americans think Brits are snobby and pretentious but smart. Brits think Americans are stupid and vulgar but funny.” This sentence distills the idea of the series, which rarely moves beyond stereotypes. For example, when Jessica visits a real estate estate, she meets snobby, pretentious Brits exactly by the book.
Too Much is as the name suggests. Almost every line spoken by characters seems designed to shock. Jessica’s grandmother discusses issues Jessica has due to too much sex with her new boyfriend, telling a story about her honeymoon where she was able to be “redeemed” from virginity after seeing a sex performance involving golf balls, which inspired her. This humor characterizes the series, following the spirit of its creator, with quite graphic sex scenes, but they manage to be excessive and tormented. The lovers come from dysfunctional families. The creator cast herself as Jessica’s older, repressed sister, who shares past trauma about their father’s death and also struggles in a relationship with an abandoning husband.
The series recruited British stars like Stephen Fry as Felix’s father, Richard E. Grant as Jessica’s boss, Jennifer Saunders appearing toward the end and recycling her Absolutely Fabulous persona, Rita Ora as herself, and Andrew Scott, known from Fleabag, as a particularly arrogant and disgusting film director. Scenes between him and Jessica are hard to watch, and his role seems to be only to prove that Jessica is talented and capable of producing a Christmas commercial on her own, though it is unclear why.
The beautiful and touching moments in the series are those revealing the characters’ past traumas, explaining psychological mechanisms that drive them and make them emotionally fragile, prone to explosive reactions. Optimistic and emotional American traits “win” over cold and formal British ones. Jessica, despite all her emotional baggage, is portrayed as a romantic interest. She is open, exposed, and always shows her feelings. Felix struggles to express emotions and, when confessing a significant past trauma, does so reluctantly and retreats into previous destructive patterns.
Too Much bluntly portrays the characters’ “emotional pit.” Therefore, in the final episode, viewers can expect a surprise. Does this ending fit the spirit of the series? According to the creator, the series is about the power of love to endure. Not every viewer may take this message from a series that sometimes dives too deeply into trauma. Watching is not always easy.