Let’s Travel with Emily In Paris

Anushka Searle reviews Netflix’s new hit show, Emily in Paris.

During a time when all we want to do is travel, this show gives a beautiful glimpse of the romantic city- Paris!

The show of course follows the character Emily, who is a marketing executive from Chicago. Emily is given the opportunity to go to Paris to give a vulnerable French marketing company an ‘American perspective’. As you can imagine her French colleagues begrudge her American perspective and the fact that she can’t even speak French. I found the cultural struggles between Emily and her fellow colleagues very funny, such as when Emily asks if her boss would like to go for lunch and Sylvie replies “No, I’ll have a cigarette”.

Emily’s lack of understanding of all things French brings a lot of comedy to the show. However, her consistent confusion of the 1^st floor being the ground floor in France becomes a positive thing for Emily, as it leads to her mistakenly trying to open the door to the apartment of her gorgeous French neighbour, Gabriel. As you can probably tell, this is not just a comedic show about a lonely travelling American, but also a major romance! Though the love interests in the show are unsurprisingly ALL gorgeous, her rocky dating experience is fairly relatable.

One of my favourite parts of this show is Emily’s fashion, which seems very reminiscent of the tv show Gossip Girl, especially with Emily’s love of hats, much like the notorious Blair Waldorf (also a lover of all things Paris)!  If you are a fan of Gossip Girl, then this is definitely the show for you! Much like GG this show has sickly sweet romances, betrayal, cheesy comedy, to-die-for fashion, and the best eye candy.

Though I thoroughly enjoyed this show, as a light-hearted easy watch after a long day of online Uni, it has received some negative comments from French critics. In a review for Premiere, Charles Martin says “no cliché is spared, not even the weakest”, these clichés include all French people being “lazy”, “flirtatious”, and “sexist”. However, as this show is shown from Emily’s perspective, we are seeing her biased perspective of the French people she encounters, and not a true representation. Certainly, this series projects Paris as a romantic wonderland, and although this is unrealistic it brings the watcher joy to see such an idyllic city. Indeed, the Financial Times recognised that some of Paris’ “real-life dwellers” found it to be a “light-hearted antidote to Covid”. With such mixed reviews it seems that the only way to truly judge this show is to watch it for yourself.

Header Image Credit: IMDB