Girls5eva

The fragmentation of the media continues; I’m a lifelong, card-carrying member of the Tina Fey appreciation society, but had no idea that she was executive producing Girls5eva, a all-girl comedy show about a Pussycat-Dolls era girl-band who attempt a modern day comeback. Fey’s Little Stranger imprint floundered with the garbled last series of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, but seem to have found their footing again with this consistently funny take on the clash between some worldly women taking on a world that doesn’t care about them anymore.

The big catch here is Sara Bareilles, a terrific singer-songwriter in her own right, ideally suited to play Dawn, a working mother who is the driving force behind the Girls5eva brand. She’s joined by Busy Phillips as the glamorous-to-a-fault Summer, and Paula Pell finding her inner Melissa McCarthy as divorced dentist Gloria. Renée Elise Goldsberry plays Wickie, who has a cool internet image that belies the truth about her somewhat shambolic lifestyle, and there’s also one further band-member who died back in the day but re-appears as a kinda force ghost; nobody said this show wasn’t silly at heart.

But Girls5eva is far smarter than a tv show about music needs to be, and although Peacock cancelled this after two seasons, Netflix have snapped it up, platforming the show in non-US territories, and forking out for a deserved third season. The central dynamic of the girls is lively and engaging, the take-downs of predatory industry men are timely, and there’s a slew of cameos under Meredith Scardino’s firm direction including SNL’s Bowen Yang, Stephen Colbert as a David Guetta-style songwriter, Tim Meadows as himself, and Dean Winters playing what feels like a close cousin of his 30 Rock deadbeat Dennis Duffy.

Netflix, as many have noted, have a sitcom problem; the amount of cash invested for almost zero result has been a defining feature of the streaming platform to date. The collapse of Kimmy Schmidt doesn’t bode well, but hopefully Girls5eva can buck the trend and make a comeback that the girls would be proud of. With Fey on hand for a one-and-done cameo as Dolly Parton, there’s all sorts of funny takes on pop culture here, from ‘ Joe Scarborough’s funk album, to anything by the Stones, Sharon or Oliver’; these girls might not be 4 eva, or even 5 eva, but they’ll do for now.