But by focusing on Dunham the persona – and worse, by blurring the distinction between Dunham and Hannah – much of the chatter surrounding Girls has obscured Lena Dunham the auteur. Her first feature film Tiny Furniture (2010) shares a lot of its DNA with its small-screen successor, but it is the show that is her masterpiece. With its short episodes and long story arcs, there’s a rich, novelistic denseness to the slow-burning character development. But as Jemima Kirke, who plays Jessa put it , because the show “became so enmeshed with this cultural movement that it paralleled, it got lost as a piece of artwork.” I hope the singularity of Dunham’s vision as a storyteller is the show’s lasting legacy. Influenced by the pre-mumblecore tendencies of Claudia Weill’s 1978 offbeat comedy Girlfriends (in fact, Weill directed an episode in the show’s first series), the classical rom-coms of Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers, and – of course – television’s most enduring New York City quartet, Sex & the City, Girls has always worn its references on its sleeve. What was and is interesting about it is the way the show deviated from its predecessors, creating something that was somehow pop and indie, a six-season-long love story filled with tension, longing, heartbreak, betrayal and growth that unfolded between friends, not just lovers. Rebecca Traister , in her essay on the show’s first season, wrote about how it revealed the “emotional, intimate, irritating, satisfying, pleasurable, lasting” connections girls make with each other. Dunham pitched the series to HBO when she was just 23 years old, describing it as a group of girls “navigating the transition out of college-level codependence on their girlfriends”. This attention to the minutiae of women’s relationships with each other is the thing I loved and love most about the show. That’s where the most comedic – and most romantic – moments really took place. My friends and I have watched these characters grow up. Now that their stories are ending, so comes the heart-sinking feeling that the time when my friends are the centre of my life is ending – and the realisation that we might be growing up, too.