New Delhi, July 19 -- Remember when Lena Dunham was the most important voice in television? Girls, her chaotic, semi-autobiographical HBO series, smashed its way into the prestige TV landscape like a giggling wrecking-ball, all elbows and ambition. It was bold and brash and unshaved. It was "cinema" for the small screen, with characters that were abrasively specific and men who were off-puttingly real. In 2012, when Girls premiered, we bought into its first season-its rawness, its honesty, its audacity-and we went in a little harder on a man named Adam Driver, breaking through with such magnetism that you could practically see future Oscar nominations floating above his head.

Then Girls kept going. And going. And it turned out, maybe tha...