Emily in Paris, season 4, review: What did France do to deserve this?

Another series of Emily in Paris is now available on Netflix. Photo / Instagram, @emilyinparis

Lily Collins’ American PR is back with more love affairs and ugly outfits in a series so bad it borders on diplomatically offensive.

REVIEW:

France does a decent job of hosting the Olympics and what does an ungrateful world give it in return? Another series of Emily in Paris (Netflix). This is series four. A show once notable for its relentless perkiness now has all the youthful vigour of Serge Gainsbourg after a lifetime of Gitanes.

The leads, Lily Collins and Lucas Bravo, seem weary. There is barely a plot, just actors appearing in scenes that you could shuffle into a random order without affecting the narrative flow, like a bunch of TikTok posts.

Emily (Collins) is inexplicably still in demand, both as a marketing professional and a girlfriend, despite wearing outfits that will give you retinal burn. Gabriel the Hot Chef (Bravo) and Alfie the Annoying Londoner (Lucien Laviscount) are in love with her. Emily is in love with Gabriel, but he’s having a baby with Camille, who is in love with him but also with a woman called Sofia.

In what must be a very French way of doing things, Gabriel, Camille and her lesbian lover all live together, while he’s in a relationship with Emily in the flat upstairs. “It’s a real menage a quatre!” someone says. If the French made a TV series about this scenario, it would be sexy. Here, it’s less Jules et Jim, more George and Mildred.

That last reference will mean nothing to the under-40s, but Emily in Paris likes a generational divide, embodied by Emily and her sophisticated older boss, Sylvie (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu). “It’s mostly Gen Z and millennials who are adopting a wellness approach to alcohol. They’re not sober, they’re just exploring not talking about it,” Emily explains during a PR brainstorming session. “So they’re drinking but not talking about it?” someone asks. “No,” says Sylvie, eyes rolling to the heavens, “they’re not drinking but they won’t shut up about it.”

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The best thing about this series – and it’s slim pickings, believe me – is Bruno Gouery as Luc, Emily’s hapless colleague. He supplies the comic touches that are lacking elsewhere, although every so often a line of dialogue comes along to cut through the cuteness, as if inserted into the script when no one was looking.

Emily says that someone “gave me hope that not every French person hated me just because I’m American”. “No,” another French person tells her, “they hate you because you steal their boyfriends.”