When Lena Dunham moved to London in 2021, she had given up on love. “The rest of my life is just going to be about my family and my animals and my job,” she remembered telling herself.

If you have seen Dunham’s previous work, which often skews antiromantic, this will make a special kind of sense. In the six-season HBO series “Girls,” a generation- defining traumedy, Dunham — a writer, director and occasional actor — viewed love with a conjunctival eye: itchy, gritty, irritated.

But love had not given up on Dunham. Just after her move, she met musician Luis Felber. She didn’t anticipate anything serious. “I was seeing it as fleeting. It’s fun to hang out with a boy during the pandemic,” Dunham said in a recent interview. She was wrong. By autumn that year, they were married.

Soon, there were reports that Dunham and Felber were developing a show based on their relationship. That 10-episode series, “Too Much,” is now streaming on Netflix.

Is “Too Much” a romantic comedy? Yes. Is it inspired by Dunham’s own story? Sure. But “Too Much” wants more — inclusivity, expansiveness, a reconsideration of the love stories we tell and about whom we tell them.

“I want all people in rom-coms, because that’s real life,” said Megan Stalter, the star of “Too Much,” who had gathered with Dunham and their co-stars Janicza Bravo and Emily Ratajkowski to talk about the show.

“Too Much” joins recent comedies like “Fleabag,” “Catastrophe,” “Insecure,” “Jane the Virgin” and “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” in widening the aperture of the rom-com. For the girls who grew up on “Girls,” the new series is an opportunity to rejigger the genre, which despite recent efforts remains oddly regressive.

Is straight marriage still the goal? And do characters, particularly women, have to become the best versions of themselves to deserve love? The girls who don’t have their dream jobs, who are appetitive and brash and occasionally the authors of some terrible choices — maybe they should get a happy ending too.

The relationships among the women’s characters aren’t as casual or cozy, at least at first. Stalter, an actor and comedian best known for “Hacks,” stars as Jessica, a line producer who moves from New York to London in the wake of romantic disaster. Dunham plays Nora, Jessica’s sister, who has separated from her newly polyamorous husband (Andrew Rannells). Bravo plays Kim, a brusque colleague of Jessica’s who has a crush on another workmate. And Ratajkowski plays Wendy, a knitting influencer and the girlfriend of Jessica’s ex.

Stalter and Ratajkowski are in their mid-30s, Bravo in her 40s, Dunham in between. As kids, all of them enjoyed romantic comedies — “Splash,” “Love Actually,” “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” the Nora Ephron canon. They watched enthusiastically without demur. But as adults, they began to have questions.

Like, is the villain of “My Best Friend’s Wedding” actually the groom? Was Bridget Jones really considered fat? Is a “coma comedy” like “While You Were Sleeping” even ethical? Was Hugh Grant in “Notting Hill” kind of a stalker? Why were women constantly made to compete? Are any straight men OK?

Even if a viewer were to put those concerns aside, these comedies were often limited and limiting. With only a few exceptions, the heroines of these movies are white, straight and straight size (even Jones). And if they are often frizzy around the edges (neurotic, insecure), that frizz would be blow-dried into something sleeker before the credits rolled.

But life isn’t always like that. Or it isn’t only like that. Love can come when you aren’t expecting it. It doesn’t always have to be earned.

That was Dunham’s experience. A Hollywood wunderkind who made her first movie, “Tiny Furniture,” just out of college and sold “Girls” right after, she faced health challenges and a painful breakup before moving to London. She wasn’t looking for love.

It found her anyway. And she wanted to make a rom-com that reflected that reality — the story of a woman who, as Dunham put it, “is living in that confusion of: I know who I am, and I’m all right on my own, but also wouldn’t it be nice to have somebody to eat soup with at night?”

While “Too Much” is in dialogue with classic romantic comedies, there are major and minor differences. The casting is somewhat more diverse, the body types more varied. Although Jessica initially feels competitive with Wendy, the women ultimately find common cause.

And “Too Much” allows Jessica to live in her imperfections, not necessarily fix them. She doesn’t have to be an angel, a dream girl or a saint to be loved. Her new boyfriend, Felix, a musician played by English actor Will Sharpe, says she is “too much” in a good way — “like just the right amount and then a little bit more.” Who wants to be — or be with — an angel anyway?

“The turn-on is to be acknowledged as being complex,” Bravo said approvingly.

Rita Wilson, a veteran of romantic comedies like “Sleepless in Seattle,” had sworn off playing what she described in a phone call as “the warm, kind, nurturing mother.” But having worked with Dunham on “Girls,” she knew that her character, the mother of Jessica and Nora, wouldn’t be just a typical mother. Sure enough, Lois enjoys a romance of her own.

“I feel liberated working with Lena,” Wilson said. “I felt that way on ‘Girls,’ and I felt that way on ‘Too Much.’ ”

Rhea Perlman, a “Girls” fan (and a “Cheers” legend) who plays Jessica and Nora’s grandmother, echoed this. “Lena has a way of creating and directing that makes people feel free,” she said. “Maybe some people would be turned off by that much sex and that much talk of sex. But she made it so funny and so real.”

In significant ways, “Too Much” is not “Girls.”

“Girls,” Dunham argued, was about sex. “Too Much” is about falling in love. And although it has its share of uncomfortable moments, this new series trades the hyperrealism of “Girls” for a more forgiving gaze.

The show may have started with Dunham’s story, but she has tried to make it expansive enough that almost anyone can imagine themselves in Jessica’s happy ending.

That’s what Stalter wanted as a girl watching rom-coms. It’s what she wants now.

“You want to live the fantasy,” she said. “You want to see yourself.”