The show's premise was drawn from Dunham's own life, as were major aspects of the main character, including financial isolation from her parents, becoming a writer, and making unfortunate decisions.

The show, which premiered on HBO in 2012,[3] revolves around a group of friends played by Dunham, Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke, and Zosia Mamet, navigating the challenges of relationships, work, and self-discovery in New York City.

Two years after graduating from Oberlin College, aspiring writer Hannah Horvath is shocked when her parents announce they will no longer financially support her life in Brooklyn, New York.

"[8] Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke, Zosia Mamet, Adam Driver, Alex Karpovsky, and Andrew Rannells co-star as Hannah's circle of friends, as they cycle through friendships, romantic partners, careers, and new experiences.

"[10] She also noted "the series reflects a part of the population that hasn’t previously been seen on either film or television and fills the gap between the characters on Sex and the City and the CW’s Gossip Girl.

"[11] The series ultimately explores how significantly flawed, unlikable, morally ambiguous characters in their twenties navigate the challenges of adulthood and learn to embrace their imperfections.

[47] Judd Apatow said he was drawn to Dunham's imagination after watching Tiny Furniture, and added that Girls would provide men with an insight into "realistic females.

[1] The show's look is achieved by furnishings at a number of vintage boutiques in New York, including Brooklyn Flea and Geminola owned by Jemima Kirke's mother.

"Gossip Girl was teens duking it out on the Upper East Side and Sex and the City was women who [had] figured out work and friends and now want to nail romance and family life.

[1] The pilot intentionally references Sex and the City as producers wanted to make it clear that the driving force behind Girls is that the characters were inspired by the former HBO series and moved to New York to pursue their dreams.

[1] Dunham's identity and her creative endeavors played a pivotal role in establishing the groundwork for the show, persistently surfacing in discussions surrounding "Girls."

There are several key aspects: emphasis on the privileged environment of her upbringing in New York's art scene and her early intellectual maturity; her utilization of personal experiences to craft candid and humorous storylines; her generation's experience of minimal privacy both in real life and online; and her deliberate choice to portray her body onscreen, preemptively addressing potential criticisms regarding her body size.

Reviewing the first three episodes at the 2012 SXSW Festival, he said the series conveys "real female friendships, the angst of emerging adulthood, nuanced relationships, sexuality, self-esteem, body image, intimacy in a tech-savvy world that promotes distance, the bloodlust of surviving New York on very little money and the modern parenting of entitled children, among many other things—all laced together with humor and poignancy".

Gawker's John Cook strongly criticized Girls, saying it was "a television program about the children of wealthy famous people and shitty music and Facebook and how hard it is to know who you are and Thought Catalog and sexually transmitted diseases and the exhaustion of ceaselessly dramatizing your own life while posing as someone who understands the fundamental emptiness and narcissism of that very self-dramatization.

[74] David Wiegland of the San Francisco Chronicle said that "The entire constellation of impetuous, ambitious, determined and insecure young urbanites in Girls is realigning in the new season, but at no point in the four episodes sent to critics for review do you feel that any of it is artificial".

[77] In reference to the series' growth, Willa Paskin of Salon thought that Girls "has matured by leaps and bounds, comedically and structurally, but it has jettisoned some of its ambiguity, its sweetness, its own affection for its characters.

"[79] Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter lauded the first two episodes, and commented: "Going into its third season, Girls is as refreshing and audacious as ever and one of the few half-hour dramedies where you can feel its heart pounding and see its belly ripple with laughter.

[89] Catherine Scott of The Independent asked: "What's there to celebrate for feminism when black, Hispanic or Asian women are totally written out of a series that's supposedly set in one of the most diverse cities on earth?

But also, what's there to celebrate for feminism when a show depicts four entirely self-interested young women and a lead character having the most depressing, disempowered sexual relationships imaginable?

[91] Writing at The Hairpin, Jenna Wortham deemed the series' lack of a main black character "alienating, a party of four engineered to appeal to a very specific subset of the television viewing audience, when the show has the potential to be so much bigger than that".

[96] In a review for Ms., Kerensa Cadenas writes, "Despite its lack of a serious class and race consciousness, Girls does address other feminist issues currently in play, among them body image, abortion, relationships within a social media age, and street harassment.

"[97] Kim Price of The Independent predicted that the Girls' legacy would be the series' "mainstreaming of 'gross-out' femininity" and "intermittent and sometimes cack-handed attempts to comment on contemporary issues such as race relations or lack of opportunities for young people".

[7] While the characters in Girls are often criticized for their narrow and privileged view of the world, being from clearly wealthier families, Dunham actually intended this specific portrayal to use and explains how it is a tool to justify their slow maturation.

Several of Dunhams collaborators have also been nominated for various awards including co-stars Allison Williams and Adam Driver as well as recurring guest stars Riz Ahmed, Becky Ann Baker, Gaby Hoffmann, Andrew Rannells, Matthew Rhys, Peter Scolari, and Patrick Wilson.

[106] Models Karlie Kloss, Karen Elson, and Hilary Rhoda; designers Nicole Miller, Cynthia Rowley, and Zac Posen; and editors Anna Wintour, Joanna Coles, and Amy Astley were all in attendance.