For those who thought that Girls went a little light on the plight of bourgeois white malcontents, Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner have returned with Camping, based on a British series of the same name. While I haven't seen the UK's version, I can only presume it's more charming than this one, despite its star-studded cast. Jennifer Garner leads the series as an uptight, Instagram-obsessed mom who plans a camping trip for her husband (David Tennant, with an American accent that feels like a waste) to celebrate his 45th birthday. Things start to go sideways almost immediately, thanks in part to characters like Juliette Lewis' freebird and Brett Gelman's sourpuss.
If all of this sounds a little expected, well, it's because it is. Whether or not Camping can get past that and actually become something interesting and subversive -- besides White People Problems: The Series -- remains to be seen (the cast is not exclusively white, to be fair, though the focus is very much on privilege and bourgeois concerns). But the cast seems to be having fun, at least.
Camping premieres Sunday, October 14th on HBO. Check out the trailer below:
To celebrate her husband Walt’s 45th birthday, the obsessively organized and aggressively controlling Kathryn gathers together her meek sister, her holier-than-thou ex-best friend and a free-spirited tagalong — and what was supposed to be a delightful, back-to-nature camping trip quickly becomes a weekend of tested marriages and woman-on-woman crime that won’t soon be forgotten. The show is written and executive produced by Lena Dunham (creator and star of HBO’s “Girls”), Jenni Konner (executive producer of HBO’s “Girls”) and John Riggi, and is based on the British series of the same name created by Julia Davis and produced by Baby Cow Productions.
CAMPING follows a group of old friends as they arrive at the underwhelming Brown Bear Lake campsite to celebrate a landmark birthday, sparking heightened emotions, latent tensions (sexual and otherwise) and memories they’d rather forget. Other series regulars include: Juliette Lewis (Oscar® nominee for “Cape Fear”), Arturo Del Puerto (“Independence Day: Resurgence”), Ione Skye (“Fever Pitch”), Janicza Bravo (directing credits include “Lemon” and HBO’s “Divorce”) and Brett Gelman (“Stranger Things”). The recurring cast includes Bridget Everett (“Trainwreck”).
