Can Lena's Dunham new Girls do for 40-year-olds what she did for 23-year-olds? I know it can | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

I was in my early 20s when the classic series debuted and I recognised so much. I can’t wait to see how the reboot takes on a new – equally messy – stage of life HBO’s Girls is coming back, Lena Dunham and her fellow cast members announced this week, and the internet is already abuzz. Women of a certain age, myself included – approaching, turning or having turned 40 – are genuinely thrilled, if also slightly trepidatious.

When you’ve loved, loathed and most importantly grown with characters in the way many of us did with Girls, you feel protective of a show’s legacy. But with Dunham, I’m confident it is in good hands. Girls means a lot to me, in part because it was the topic of my first ever column for this newspaper : in 2012, shortly after the show premiered, it was already generating a bananas amount of internet discourse and I was on work experience. I was in my early 20s and not long off the dole. I didn’t share the privilege of Dunham’s characters, which is perhaps why I so enjoyed how she skewered it. (I…