I Love LA: Rachel Sennott’s iteration of the scrappy and loose adventures of young people

Americans are great at many genres of TV shows, but one of the most consistent is the young people hanging out one.

They’re certainly not all the same, ranging from the congenial and inoffensive, such as Friends and New Girl, to the more prickly and divisive, like Girls and Adults, the latter of which was just renewed for a second season.

They’re not all coming-of-age, although the university-set ones such as Sex Lives of College Girls and Overcompensating are, but almost all are about friendship and finding your way through a sometimes hostile world that just doesn’t get you.

It’s the combination of youthful vigour and cluelessness, and that sense of self-discovery that makes these shows so irresistible. But the main thing is they’re set at a point in your life when your friends are the most important people.

Those relationships can be as complex as romantic ones, but they’re also generally less fraught because those bonds can survive more challenges. You’re not putting everything in one basket, and you don’t tend to compromise as much of who you are to fit into someone else’s life.

But the tensions and conflicts that do arise are rich, and the excellent new half-hour comedy-drama I Love LA is teeming with friendship shenanigans.

It’s been compared to Girls and Entourage. The former because its two main characters are young women in their late 20s navigating being an adult, and the latter because one of them is a social media influencer and the other is her manager.

But don’t worry, that’s where the Entourage comparison basically ends – I Love LA is smarter, sharper and infinitely less bro-y than the Mark Wahlberg-inspired series (look, it was of its time and that’s where it should stay).

I Love LA is also of its time, not that it labours to make a point of it like, oh, say, that first season of And Just Like That, but it so clearly exists in this moment.

Created by and starring Rachel Sennott, a current It Girl actor who broke out in 2020 in Shiva Baby and has gone on to be in young people films Bottoms and Bodies Bodies Bodies, the show is centred on Maia.

A native New Yorker who moved to LA to be a talent agent, she’s in a relationship with live-in boyfriend Dylan (Josh Hutcherson), a schoolteacher. He friends are Alani (True Whitaker), the daughter of a famous actor who “works” at her father’s production company, and Charlie (Jordan Firstman), a celebrity stylist.

But her most significant friendship is with Tallulah (Odessa A’zion), an influencer (yes, we know they prefer the term “content creator” but, well, we don’t) who brings chaos into every room she walks into.

The two have been semi-estranged for a little while, although Tallulah may not know that, so when she blows into LA to surprise Maia on her birthday, it inevitably leads to disruption and a confrontation. Friendships are tricky but no one understands you quite as well as a lifelong buddy.

At first, Tallulah is who you might imagine if your measure of an influencer is someone prances about, posting at inappropriate moments, but the character has dimensions, ambition and an uncompromising ideal of who she is and how she should be represented. You might think her a little bit ridiculous but you won’t hate her.

Maia too has goals, and they’re not always in line with her manager, a Millennial of the girlboss era (Leighton Meester), which captures the generational difference a decade makes.

This is also the crew that doesn’t care about nepo babies the way others do – two of its cast, A’Zion and Whitaker are both scions of famous parents (Pamela Adlon and Forest Whitaker, respectively) – because their boundaries are just different, and they don’t apologise for it.

But I Love LA is more than just the Gen Z version (technically, Sennott, at 30, is a Millennial) of Girls or any of its predecessors. Like the best young people being cool shows, it’s carved out its own comedic sensibilities (a wild cocaine binge will have you cackling) and identity, and it’s one that is very easy to fall in with.

It’s a little bit scrappy, it’s a little bit loose, but so are its characters, and that’s why I Love LA is actually so fun to just hang out with.

I Love LA is streaming on HBO Max with new episodes weekly