In defence of Emily in Paris

A frothy new drama called Emily in Paris arrived on Netflix last month. Starring Lily Collins — daughter of Phil — it tells the story of a pretty social media ‘expert’ who moves from Chicago to Paris, where she manages to offend almost everybody she meets, and yet somehow triumphs. It is Eloise in Paris for the Instagram/Trump generation.

The show is a croquembouche-esque fantasy of Frenchness. Anorexic-looking chicks eat croissants and pretend to enjoy them. There are pre-war apartments with parquet flooring, and windows decorated with twinkling fairy lights. The men are handsome bastards who know how to cook omelettes. This is television designed for women the world over who desperately want la vie en rose but will settle for a bottle of pale, lukewarm rosé with some Serge Gainsbourg on in the background.

No surprise, then, that I loved it. I couldn’t help but wonder whether the writer, Darren Star of Sex and the City fame, had access to my secret Pinterest pages, the ones (to my shame) saved under titles that include ‘French girl style’ and ‘Paris apartment interiors’. I felt exposed and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. Emily in Paris is a dreadful programme, sans doute, but I watched every episode and found myself wanting more.

The chain-smoking bitches Emily meets in Paris refer to her as ‘ringarde’. In English, she is what Kate Moss would call a ‘basic bitch’: a woman obsessed with curating the perfect lifestyle, who loves home comforts. A woman whose iPhone case tells you everything you need to know about her personality. Nobody wants to be called a basic bitch.

Even Emily recognises her own unoriginality. ‘You may mock us but the truth is… you need us. Without basic bitches like me, you wouldn’t be fashionable,’ she tells the show’s cartoonish male fashion designer, Pierre Cadault, when he mocks her for having an Eiffel Tower charm attached to her handbag.