Can Lena's Dunham new Girls do for 40-year-olds what she did for 23-year-olds? I know it can | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

I was in my early 20s when the classic series debuted and I recognised so much.

I can’t wait to see how the reboot takes on a new – equally messy – stage of life HBO’s Girls is coming back, Lena Dunham and her fellow cast members announced this week, and the internet is already abuzz.

Women of a certain age, myself included – approaching, turning or having turned 40 – are genuinely thrilled, if also slightly trepidatious.

When you’ve loved, loathed and most importantly grown with characters in the way many of us did with Girls, you feel protective of a show’s legacy.

But with Dunham, I’m confident it is in good hands.

Girls means a lot to me, in part because it was the topic of my first ever column for this newspaper : in 2012, shortly after the show premiered, it was already generating a bananas amount of internet discourse and I was on work experience.

I was in my early 20s and not long off the dole.

I didn’t share the privilege of Dunham’s characters, which is perhaps why I so enjoyed how she skewered it. (I never understood the criticism that the show was about spoilt rich girls.

So many people missed the satire.) Yet there were aspects of it that I related to, as I wrote at the time: Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here .

Continue reading...