Emily in Paris Review

Darren Star knows how to build a show around a city, and the surfaces here are the product: the apartments, the clothes, the photography of a Paris shot in good light and no rain. That is a real skill, and it is why the series works as a hit. It is also everything the series has. The writing treats each French character as a delivery system for one trait, which is where the French press turned on it hardest and correctly.

Everyone smokes, everyone is rude, everyone is having an affair, and everyone speaks English at the exact moment the plot needs them to. Emily is written the same way in the other direction. She solves each week's account with a single idea the show declares brilliant, and because she is never wrong she never changes, which leaves ten episodes with no arc to speak of. The dialogue carries the worst of it, stating what a scene means immediately after the scene has meant it.

There are real things here. Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu plays Sylvie with a dryness and a private life the script has not earned, and every scene with her is better than the one around it. Lily Collins is likable in a part with nothing underneath. The awards nominations that followed produced a season of arguments about what television is for, and the arguments were more interesting than the show.