COVER STORY

Modern ‘Girls’ in HBO series

By Jay Bobbin © Zap2it

Get ready for television’s radically new view of the secret lives of girls.

It comes from Lena Dunham, a young writer-director-actress whose unique creative voice has made marks at the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) Music and Media Festival in Austin, Texas.

After big receptions there for her films “Creative Nonfiction” and “Tiny Furniture,” she returned last month to unveil her newest project: the often stunningly frank HBO series “Girls,” which premieres Sunday, April 15.

With filmmaker Judd Apatow (“The 40-Year-Old Virgin”) as an executive producer, the seriocomic show revolves around several 20-something New Yorkers struggling to balance their careers and love lives ... and, frequently, their friendships with one another. If that sounds like a younger “Sex and the City,” Dunham purposely sets her edgier “Girls” apart by referencing the earlier series in the first episode.

“I’d heard that writers and independent filmmakers could make a living writing or directing for TV,” she says, “so my interest in television was something I started to talk about when I had the opportunity to get an agent and think about the next step in my career. Having a show that was mine, with a character like the one in ‘Tiny Furniture’ that I could develop over a series arc, was nothing I’d ever even contemplated. The fact that HBO had an interest in something like that was mind-blowing.”

Either the writer or co-writer of the initial season’s 10 scripts, and the director of half of them, Dunham explains she looks at her central characters as “girls” rather than women. That includes her own alter ego, self-aware but deeply vulnerable Hannah, who’s forced even more to find her own way when her parents cut her off financially. The plight also leads her to take a fresh, not entirely thrilling view of her invested- only-to-a-point boyfriend (Adam Driver).

Dunham’s fellow “Girls” in the show have notable parentage: Allison Williams is the daughter of “NBC Nightly News” and “Rock Center” anchor Brian Williams; Zosia Mamet has the noted playwright-filmmaker David Mamet for a father; and Jemima Kirke, who also worked with Dunham in “Tiny Furniture,” is the offspring of Bad Company drummer Simon Kirke.

“It’s all been sort of mindbending and wonderful at the same time,” Williams maintains of her “Girls” involvement. “I’ve dreamed of doing this my entire life, and funnily enough, there’s something that feels more adult about playing your own age than playing grown-ups in musical theater in school and middle school.

I played Sarah in ‘Guys and Dolls’ before I understood any of the themes she was dealing with.

“There’s something much more serious about playing Marnie in ‘Girls,’ ” Williams notes, “because it seems sort of zoomed-in. There are parts of her life that you don’t necessarily see in other people’s projects, and I think that wartsand-all style of Lena’s is very compelling and certainly very refreshing."

Web Links

Sunday, HBO premieres “Girls,” a new series that looks at the trials and tribulations of 20-something New Yorkers raised on “Sex and the City.” Learn more at www.hbo.com/girls/index.html

On Sunday, History’s “Full Metal Jousting” ends its first season and awards the $100,000 prize to the top jouster. Get ready for the hits at www.history.com/ shows/full-metal-jousting

It seems as if “Anthony

Bourdain: No Reservations”

TV forever, so it’s a little amazing to consider the Travel Channel mainstay has just entered Season 8 – when it feels more like 18. But after all the places the show has been over the years, instead of running out of locations to visit, the great food and adventures just keep coming.

“A lot of surprises this time out,” Bourdain says of the new season. “By that I mean surprising to me. Mozambique was a bit of a surprise – a very poor country with shockingly good food. Croatia: knew it was going to be good, but wow!”

One of the biggest surprises for the travel essayist was Baja, Mexico. “That’s a developing wonderland that could well be the next big thing,” Bourdain says. “Americans aren’t going (there). They were scared away by the drug wars. And even though the murders have drastically declined since 2009, they really aren’t returning or haven’t returned in any number. So a lot of the kids – the younger chefs – have really taken it upon themselves to just say, ‘The hell with it – we’re going to start cooking modern Mexican food for Mexicans.’ ”

The episode airing Monday, April 16, has the show in Kansas City, Mo., one of several domestic locales the series visits this season, along with Portugal, Finland, Japan, Australia, Malaysia and elsewhere.

•You sometimes have musical guests on. Any this season you can mention?

“The Black Keys will be in one episode, I can tell you that. We’re in Austin now, and we’re here during SXSW (the South by Southwest festival), and there will be a lot of bands during that episode.”

•What are some of your most memorable episodes from the past seven seasons?

“I remain very, very proud of the Rome episode. First of all, it’s always a great experience shooting in Rome. But as a creative enterprise, I’m particularly proud of it because it’s just such a suicidally stupid thing to shoot an entire episode of a food and travel show in a beautiful city like Rome in black and white. We worked very, very hard on that.”

In Focus

“What’s Trending With Shira Lazar,” whatstrending.com

The second season of the interactive digital talk show launched in February, featuring Lazar talking with celebrity guests, offering live on-location special episodes, and picking up on what’s hot and happening in the worlds of entertainment and technology. This season, “What’s Trending” adds Tubefilter founder Marc Hustvedt as a social media correspondent. Along with this Wednesday show, Lazar, a native of Montreal, has another show, “The Partners Project,” which posts on Thursdays.

•You’ve said that where “No Reservations” goes is influenced by what you read. What are you reading now?

“I’m reading Jack Gilbert collected poems and thinking about Greece. Thinking about the Greek islands where he spent a lot of time.”

•You’re up to Season 8; how long do you think you can keep this going?

“As long as it’s interesting and fun for me and for the people I work with. As long as we find ourselves, as we continually do, sitting in the hotel lobby somewhere, saying, ‘How can we do this? What can we try that we haven’t done before?’ As long as there are answers to those questions, as long as it’s interesting, then I’ll keep doing it. The minute it becomes a job, I will stop.”