I Love LA review – Rachel Sennott’s HBO comedy finds itself but takes its time

<p>The Shiva Baby and Bottoms star gets her own glossy sitcom which offers us a bumpy ride until it begins to take shape in the final stretch</p><p>For most of its public existence, I Love LA, HBO’s new comedy series created by Rachel Sennott, was known online as <a href="https://www.vulture.com/article/rachel-sennott-hbo-pilot.html">Untitled Rachel Sennott Project</a>. One wonders if they should have kept the temporary moniker, which befits the show better than its actual title; though I Love LA does go to Erewhon, it’s less a love letter to the city, nor a portrait of its precarious creative class, than a glossy, prestige brand bet on Sennott, an internet It Girl with a distinctly modern indistinction between actor and celebrity, and the popular, chaotic, very online sensibility that she embodies.</p><p>The logic of the project flowed downhill: Sennott, one of the few internet-bred comedians with real movie mettle (see: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jun/09/shiva-baby-review-black-comedy-is-a-festival-of-excruciating-embarrassment">Shiva Baby</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/jun/07/i-used-to-be-funny-review-rachel-sennott">I Used To Be Funny</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/nov/02/bottoms-review-queer-high-school-comedy-from-the-makers-of-shiva-baby">Bottoms</a>), given eight whole episodes; HBO, continually losing younger viewers to YouTube, appealing to extremely online zillennials; the chattering class, starved for a truly good young-adult comedy – FX’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/may/27/adults-fx-review">Adults</a>, released earlier this year, didn’t cut it – eager for a successor to the messy, self-absorbed and totally absorbing women of Sex and the City, Girls and Insecure. All can agree: nothing gets people talking like a confide