‘Everything I Know About Love’ Review – A Better British ‘Girls’

Imagine a version of Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking girl (yes, groundbreaking, don’t argue) where Jessa (Jemima Kirke) and Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet) are the two main actors. Two fan favorites – one, a carefree but lost soul; the other an innocent, talkative ray of light. Imagine these two at the top of their own streak and you’d have peacocks All I Know About Love.

Sounds tempting, right? It should because All I Know About Love aimed at every fan of girl, Sex and the Cityor College Girls Sex Life. It’s four women who date, party, work and gossip, all in a group of friends riddled with the deepest lows and the highest highs (both drug-related and otherwise). TV shows like this are pretty common; Still, there is always a reason to be thankful to them.

That’s because our two leads, longtime best friends Maggie (Emma Appleton) and Birdy (Bel Powley), have enough BFF chemistry to greenlight a handful of seasons together. The couple is a closer duo than any of the ladies in the above series, and as such watching the show feels like hanging out with them your best friend. With frequent flashbacks to elementary school days and giggling moments of pure joy, All I Know About Love will have you opening your phone and texting your best friend, “Hey, remember when we…”

“Have you ever found yourself wanting to invent a new version of marriage, but only with two people who promise to love each other forever?” Birdy theories about friendship in the first episode. “They’re not having sex or anything. They just hang out a lot.”

But Maggie and Birdy are going through some big life changes. They’ve just moved in with college friends Amara (Aliyah Odoffin) and Nell (Marli Siu), who happily add some extra structure to their friendship. Maggie and Birdy, nearly unemployed (they dress up as pigs and hand out leaflets on street corners), yearn for a more romantic life. Birdy has never had a boyfriend. Maggie always wants to find a way to celebrate Also never lose money.

In no time at all, her wishes are granted: Birdy begins a very serious relationship with Nathan (Ryan Bown), the roommate of Maggie’s recent fling. Maggie “finds” a job by sitting on the couch and watching TV – a producer of the reality TV show she’s watching happens to be her landlord, and offers her a gig while she digs a hole in her ceiling mends. OK, maybe there is little Lena Dunham in Maggie.

Like any first friend, Nathan drives a wedge between Maggie and Birdy. The whole “best friends are broken up by a significant other” cliché is a tale as old as time, though All I Know About Love feels new again: Instead of just arguing with Nathan in the living room, Maggie uses her other two roommates as a sounding board about how annoying it is that he comes over every damn night.

Although Emma Appleton is an amazing party girl/lead lady, as always, it’s Bel Powley who steals the show. The morning show star has a knack for appearing edgy yet upbeat; She mixes the perfect amount of confusion with attraction. The other two ladies are a hoot too (Amara works to be a professional dancer while Nell shakes off her boring relationship), but the show really shines when all four dance together, laugh together, love together. Whoever wrote the phrase “Live, Laugh, Love” made a plan.

Unfortunately though All I Know About Love spends so much time unpacking Maggie and Birdy’s relationship that it falters a bit in the B and C plots. Nell and Amara are rarely seen in the first half of the series; While having Jessa and Shoshanna guys running the show is fun, without Marnie and Hannah we lose a little of that girl Flair. Who else is going to coke off a toilet in a neon yellow mesh top? Who covers Kanye West’s “Stronger” as a ballad for an audience full of artist types?

When Amara and Nell make a bigger appearance later in the season, they can continue to develop their own characters as well as the lead actresses’ arcs. All I Know About Love around that halfway point, when chaos begins to bloom in the life of every member of the apartment, it really gets going.

In episode 5, for example, the flat share throws a party. Think girl Season 1 – when Shosh accidentally cracks the crack at a party in Bushwick and the whole episode goes haywire. Here, Birdy wins a new salmon dish at work and exclaims that she hopes to one day pass it on to her children. She decides that the precious piece will live safely in her bottom drawer for the next few years. Maggie forces her to show it at the party; Later, Birdy catches Maggie snorting coke off the china plate. Birdy huffs and puffs out the front door.

“I’m going to turn you guys into a reality show,” says Maggie’s boss (who for some reason is drunk at said party), watching as the whole thing gets planned. This line likely inspired Dolly Alderton, the author of the book All I Know About Love based on making this whole series in the first place. In addition to writing her memoir, Alderton is the show’s creator.

All I Know About Love comes from Alderton’s 2018 memoir of the same name, which follows a handful of millennials trying to make sense of life in their mid-20s. As such, each episode begins with the same quote: “This work is inspired by real live events and real people (but fictional when life didn’t provide a good enough story).” This also provides another great appeal of the showe: The story takes place around the same time in 2012 girl debuted on HBO. Please queue up with the floral dress and leather jacket combo, the early days of Twitter and old clunky MacBooks!

Every episode of All I Know About Love longer than the usual 30 minutes girl and Sex and the City, which unfortunately makes the show feel a bit bloated. But there is so much promise for the seasons to come – I don’t use that reference lightly, but there is a hint that it needs to be realised fleasack in Maggie and Birdy’s friendship – that it’s worth jumping on board the show now. Any series with plenty of contemporary pindrops, like Grimes’ “Oblivion” and Jessie J’s “Domino” is a throwback I’ll happily applaud. Let’s see what 2013 brings these girls.