Women of the Hour with Lena Dunham, review: Body talk proves the Girls star is a woman of substance

The US actress and writer has launched a feminist podcast made in association with the website Buzzfeed

It's a measure of the cool new heights that podcasting has reached that it is turning into the celebrity side-project du jour. The actor Alec Baldwin was an early adopter with his US show on WNYC, Here's the Thing, in which he interviews friends and fellow stars, while early this year the rapper Snoop Dogg followed suit with a show that saw him, in the words of the accompanying blurb, "choppin' game and doin' full-length interviews with a who's who from the entertainment industry world".

Last month the singer Alanis Morissette began a self-help podcast of such gobsmacking awfulness that it requires a visit to a therapist just to get over it. Now it's the turn of the US actress and writer of the hit series Girls, Lena Dunham, who has launched Women of the Hour, a feminist podcast made in association with the website Buzzfeed.

Make no mistake: this is no homespun, DIY, spare-bedroom job. The production is clear and crisp, and comes with a moony ambient soundtrack that fades in and out and sounds as if one of Dunham's minions has been put in charge of a dial labelled "Pathos".

It's also packed to the gills with guests, many of them Dunham's famous friends (the actress Emma Stone seems to be a regular fixture) and fellow writers.

Get past the glossy sound and celebrity guests though, and, mercifully, there is substance here. Dunham's first episode was reflection on the nature of female friendship, with much of the discussion based on her communications with the writer and journalist Ashley Ford. The two began an email correspondence after Dunham read Ford's essays on rape culture, and a bond was forged.

Both read out their early emails about shared insecurities and mutual concerns. If they went slightly overboard on the mutual admiration, there was excellent analysis of how women's differences can enrich rather than splinter a friendship.

It was the second instalment, though, that saw Dunham really get into her stride. It was about women's bodies, specifically how one's sense of confidence, identity and place in the world revolves around them. It was also about other people's perception of the female body, which is why Dunham began by reading a sample of the messages that she had received online.

"She looks like a warthog to me #truth," said one. "I want Lena Dunham's fat ass dead," wrote another. "Jesus Christ, what a fat ugly b***h," bellowed a third.

Dunham cheerfully revealed how a slew of these tweets had arrived that morning "just before I even woke up. And one of the ones I didn't read to you actually caused me to contact a highly paid security professional. So congratulations to me."

She went on to talk to others about their body image, including a woman with alopecia, a black trans woman, a white model, and a Seattle musician with no legs who identified as a "a crip". All were asked how they view themselves inside and out, and how that squared with the perceptions of others.

If the appearance of Emma Stone and friends made you wonder if you were in for a celebrity love-in, the inclusion of ordinary men and women with extraordinary life experiences set such fears aside. Dunham's podcast is sometimes whimsical and funny but is, more often, serious and insightful. As side-projects go, it's a winner.

Twitter.com/FionaSturges