Girls - new HBO drama

“I'm in the corner, watching you kiss her, ohh

I'm right over here, why can't you see me, ohh

I'm giving it my all, but I'm not the girl you're taking home, ooo

I keep dancing on my own”

- Dancing on my own, Robyn -

The heart breaking lyrics of the song ‘Dancing on my own’ sung by Robyn echo at the end of the third episode of Girls. Girls is a new HBO drama which has recently been brought to UK screens. It is set in New York and follows 4 girls in their early twenties as they experience of love, life and heartbreak.

A lot of American TV dramas often show the glamorous side of New York being presented as a land of opportunities, hope, new beginnings and exciting adventures whereas Girls presents the contrasting harsher realities. It shows that life is not always pretty and perfect and sometimes you can be faced with so many struggles and you just have to get through it. Often no matter how much you want something or how hard you try, sometimes it’s just not enough. We have to accept that sometimes things are out of our control. We have to just pick ourselves up and just get on with it. This is echoed in the lyrics of the Robyn song. In the series, Hannah the main character comes home after a terrible day and just puts on this song and dances around her bed room. This made me smile. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve done that. After a tough day or hours of curling up on my bed crying, sometimes you feel exhausted just being upset, so you just want to get it all out. A good song and dance feels good! It’s like you’re physically releasing the pain.

Girls follows Hannah, who is a university graduate who struggles to find paid work and is struggling to support herself after her parents withdraw financial support. Her love life also presents with difficulties where she is in an awful relationship with a guy who shows her very little genuine affection and care and sees her as a sexual object with whom he can play out his porn fantasies. She is compelled to stick at this relationship as he is all she has. She holds onto and accepts every scrap of affection he gives her however infinitesimal because that’s all the attention and love she feels she receives.

In contrast there is Hannah’s beautiful flat mate Marnie, who has a stable job and a loving caring and attentive boyfriend who would do anything to make her happy. Yet she is unhappy in her relationship and craves fun and excitement which is not in his nature. It’s interesting to see how Marnie has two things that ­Hannah craves while Marnie is unsatisfied with what she has. This shows that what can make one person very happy may not fulfil the needs of another.

Then we have Shoshanna an innocent and inexperienced girl who is unhappy about being a virgin and hopes to have sex. Lastly there is Shoshanna’s cousin from England who is a keen traveller who lands in America to seek support and stability after finding out she is pregnant. She is lost, confused and unsure about what to do with her life in light of her new news.

The 4 girls are very unalike and their experiences are vastly different but they could easily be someone we know in our world. I like this drama. It shows what it can often be like to be a young woman today. That it’s not always going to be sunshine and daisies. We can have an idea of what we hope but the reality can be somewhat different and often disappointing. And often we do things that we hope will make us happy and often that can be detrimental to our happiness but we may not realise this. I guess life is one big learning curve.