In your twenties? Tweet? Lamenting the fact that you’re in the midst of an arts degree and about to enter into a slew of unpaid internships, despite the fact that you ARE the voice of your generation? Meet the characters of Lena Dunham’s Girls and behold your post-university future. In a unique portrayal of our generation’s issues, 25-year-old writer-producer-director-actress Dunham offers an intelligent look at the self-importance, struggles and often parodic nature of the life of today’s recent graduate. Dunham’s Hannah Horvath is an aspiring writer living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. She graduated from college two years ago, is still interning and is still supported by her parents.

Within moments of the pilot episode we learn that Hannah’s parents are cutting her off, something that shakes Hannah to the core. From here on, we witness her attempts to come to terms with this delayed transition, whilst navigating her life as a 20-something hipster, which is already loaded with the trials of bad sex, warehouse raves and awkward relationships. Alongside Hannah we meet her friends: the type-A Marnie who’s greatest problem is that her doting boyfriend loves her too much, the ‘sage’ gap-life traveller and the brilliant Shoshanna, a virgin NYU student.

Hannah’s on-off bedfellow Adam is at the fore of the polarizing male characters that feature. This complex semi-employed actor, at once odd and maddening and disgustingly seductive, compels. While initially this may sound like Sex and The City for the recession generation, there’s a self-consciousness to Girls that makes it more realistic and relatable than most shows aimed at the same demographic, in that it contains situations, bodies and scenes that you will rarely see elsewhere on television. There are no magical couture closets here.

In a world where self-sufficiency is ascertained when parents no longer pay for their children’s Blackberry bills, Girls manages to capture a generation’s anachronisms with its killer wit, soundtrack and healthy measure of seriousness, producing a program that is zeitgeist-y in the best possible way. HBO does it again, folks: this is most definitely one to watch.