How has diver­si­ty on tele­vi­sion changed since Girls first aired?

When Girls arrived five years ago, it was instant­ly con­demned for its bla­tant lack of diver­si­ty. Although some crit­ics and view­ers cel­e­brat­ed it for being rev­o­lu­tion­ary in its real­is­tic, body-pos­i­tive por­tray­al of mil­len­ni­al women, many felt that its pre­dom­i­nant­ly white cast was unre­al­is­tic, espe­cial­ly giv­en the minor­i­ty-white Brook­lyn set­ting. The show and its cre­ator, Lena Dun­ham, were shoved under the micro­scope with fierce intensity.

Dun­ham defend­ed her cre­ative choic­es at first: ​“I’m half Jew­ish and half WASP and wrote two jews and two wasps, and that’s what I knew how to do when I start­ed the show when I was 23.” Since then she has repeat­ed­ly cel­e­brat­ed the con­ver­sa­tion about race and inclu­siv­i­ty which the show engen­dered, and has incor­po­rat­ed some of the feed­back she received into sub­se­quent sea­sons by cast­ing peo­ple of colour in promi­nent sup­port­ing roles, such as British actor Riz Ahmed as Hannah’s surf instruc­tor-cum-fling in the open­ing episode of the sixth season.

In 2017, as Girls marks its sixth and final sea­son, it is encour­ag­ing to see how much has changed with regards to diver­si­ty on tele­vi­sion. There is now a healthy mix of shows depict­ing peo­ple in their twen­ties and thir­ties in increas­ing­ly dif­fer­ent, com­plex and nuanced ways. Take Inse­cure, in which cre­ator and star Issa Rae explores the minu­ti­ae of being an awk­ward African-Amer­i­can woman in her late twen­ties. Or Search Par­ty, which clev­er­ly blends gen­res (cre­at­ing what has been dubbed the ​“noir sit­com”) as its con­fused thir­tysome­things obsess with inves­ti­gat­ing the dis­ap­pear­ance of a for­mer col­lege acquaintance.

Mean­while Mas­ter of None con­tin­ues to explore dat­ing in New York City through the eyes of an Asian-Amer­i­can man, played by Aziz Ansari. And in Chew­ing Gum, the hilar­i­ous­ly clue­less char­ac­ter played by cre­ator Michaela Coel nav­i­gates her sex­u­al­i­ty as a horny vir­gin in a Lon­don coun­cil estate. There’s also Atlanta, about a young group of char­ac­ters sur­round­ing an up-and-com­ing rap­per in the epony­mous south­ern US city, and Fleabag, where Phoebe Waller-Bridge shows us a young woman deal­ing with life, grief and depression.

Had Girls come out today, it would like­ly get a very dif­fer­ent recep­tion than it did in 2012. While we shouldn’t under­es­ti­mate how crit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion is on any show – so much of our iden­ti­ty is formed through the ways we see our­selves reflect­ed on the screen – a lot of the reac­tion, both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive, was shaped by the land­scape of TV of the time. In 2012, mil­len­ni­al-ori­ent­ed shows were lim­it­ed, with Zooey Deschanel’s per­pet­u­al Man­ic Pix­ie Dream Girl rou­tine earn­ing high rat­ing for New Girl. Oth­er shows that debuted that year include The Mindy Project, which although impor­tant in terms of the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Asian-Amer­i­can women, didn’t receive any­where near the same lev­el of atten­tion that Girls did.

What­ev­er you think about Girls, it’s impos­si­ble to deny that it was ground­break­ing in the way it chal­lenged social expec­ta­tions of young women, par­tic­u­lar­ly in its treat­ment of sex as some­thing awk­ward, messy and con­tra­dic­to­ry. Yes, it rep­re­sent­ed a very spe­cif­ic group of priv­i­leged, ridicu­lous­ly un-self-aware white women, but per­haps it was unfair to ask Girls to be every­thing. Diver­si­ty is now much high­er on the agen­da, and Dun­ham has even said that she would prob­a­bly have incor­po­rat­ed char­ac­ters of colour were she writ­ing the show fresh today.

But to what extent did Girls pave the way for shows like Inse­cure and Chew­ing Gum? New York Times crit­ic AO Scott wrote: ​“The chil­dren of Girls – or rather its younger sib­lings, its fren­e­mies and mini-me’s, its wannabes and bet­ter-thans – are almost too numer­ous to count. Of course all these shows are unique, and their authors might argue with [the] attri­bu­tion of influ­ence. But that’s part of my point. Thanks to Girls, a gen­er­a­tion has found a lot more voices.”

This is clear­ly a reflec­tion of a wider cul­tur­al shift. We now live in a world where Bey­on­cé being snubbed at the Gram­mys or the Oscars fail­ing to recog­nise direc­tors and actors of colour doesn’t go unno­ticed any­more. Not that the jour­ney has been straight­for­ward for some: Issa Rae gained mil­lions of view­ers for her self-made web series The Mis­ad­ven­tures of Awk­ward Black Girl before a major net­work took notice.

Still, we are mov­ing in the right direc­tion. With so many dif­fer­ent sto­ries to choose from, rep­re­sent­ing so many dif­fer­ent peo­ple, it is an excit­ing time to be a TV fan in your late twen­ties. As we pre­pare to say good­bye to Girls and its cast of lov­able, self-absorbed women, it’s impor­tant to remem­ber this.