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Meet the Real Meg Stalter, Star of Lena Dunham’s New Show ‘Too Much’

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M
eg Stalter was fighting in a hot tub. She had come to a water park in Wisconsin to relax between stops on her comedy tour, which was styled as a series of fake rallies for a rich, famous, and clueless person running for president. (I know this is a difficult political scenario to imagine, but please stay with me.) While Stalter soaked, she became enraged by a group of hot-tub dwellers who were not embodying what she considered to be the spirit of the aquatic center, and she began screaming back and forth with them. “Wow, you seem like a lot of fun,” Stalter yelled, informing them that there were three other sections of the park they could move to if they had a problem with this particular one. Then she stood up, said, “You know what? I’m going to show you that if you don’t like to be around someone, you get up and leave,” turned, and banged her head on the wall.

This is probably tracking for those who know Stalter from her live performances, or Hacks, on which she plays the indefatigably clueless nepo-agent Kayla, or Stalter’s Instagram, which showcases her myriad well-­meaning, clueless characters, such as the personification of a business attempting to project allyship to the LQBTQIA+ community. (“Hi, gay! Happy Pride Month. We are sashaying away with deals.”) These talents are deployed to great effect on Too Much (July 10), the new Netflix series from married co-creators Lena Dunham and Luis Felber, in which Stalter plays a fictionalized version of Dunham, a voice of a clueless generation.

But Meg Stalter is not so much clueless as compassionately guileless. See, she was at the water park with her girlfriend, and there was a tiny child swimming alone in the hot tub. Some adults started sticking their arms out and pushing the boy away so he couldn’t enter “their area” because he was allegedly “scratching and splashing.” (At an all-ages water park, this seems like a barrier of entry.) When Stalter told them they could not touch another person’s kid but could feel free to steep elsewhere in the massive facility, the man in the group started cursing at her. And then she was so upset, actually shaking with anger as she went to go find the little boy’s parents, that she clonked her skull in front of those assholes. “It was so embarrassing,” Stalter says. “It was, like, out of a movie.”

Stalter’s protective instincts for the innocent extend to her own inner child, who is close enough to the surface as to be visible; her grooming tends toward pigtails and the kind of glittery makeup job one applies after receiving a fully stocked Caboodles makeup kit from Santa. Today, sitting in the empty audience of her favorite Los Angeles performance spot, Largo, before it opens, Stalter is wearing Hello Kitty Crocs and a one-shoulder dress in Lisa Frank-lite pastels. When we greet each other, she gives me tangerines she’d picked the day before on a trip to a farm with her girlfriend. The produce bag is sweetly tied with a sextuple-looped yellow ribbon.

Outfit by Reformation. Scarf by Mads Allen. Jewelry by Loren Stewart

In person, with her comedic cutie-brat persona tucked away, Stalter is earnest and vulnerable, frequently invoking the importance of her faith. “I’m very, like, a God girl,” she says. “So I believe that God has a plan for me, and if something happens, then he’ll have another plan.” Stalter is also, against all evidence, quite soft-spoken. “If I was in a store and someone shushed me in a scary way, that would affect me,” Stalter says. “If someone was mean to me, I could feel like the little girl. ‘Why would they be mean to her?’ ”

During Stalter’s childhood in Ohio, they were mean to her. After graduating from Catholic elementary school, she attended civilian middle school and struggled to understand why everyone wasn’t friends. The popular girls “tortured” her, she says. In an effort to facilitate the missing camaraderie, Stalter invited everyone to a Hawaiian-themed party at her house. She discovered invitations she’d lovingly handed out tossed in the trash at school. Two people wound up attending.

Stalter’s mom was (perhaps unsurprisingly) an early ally. She found Stalter funny for the things she still perceives to be true about herself: being “embarrassing or nervous and confident at the same time.” Stalter would do interpretive dances on the sidewalk; the joke was that her mom was the only one who knew she wasn’t crazy.

That tension of not everyone getting it is Stalter’s comedic modus operandi. She recalls a show at the Laugh Factory in Chicago, before she was famous, where the audience was full of drunk tourists — and a lone friend of Stal­ter’s. She had a bit where she would take the stage with blood pouring out of her mouth and open by saying, “Sorry if my mouth bleeds tonight. My mouth bleeds when I get nervous, but I think I’m OK tonight.” The only person who laughed at that show, and hysterically, was her buddy. It was a great night.

“It’s fun if it’s even just one person,” she says of connecting with an audience. “And sometimes that could be me.”

When she performs, Stalter says, “It’s something that comes over me like a trance. One of my best friends, [Saturday Night Live star] Sarah Sherman, told me that when she does stand-up, it feels like meditation. And I was like, ‘Oh, my God. It feels like that.’ ” Stalter says when she’s performed with a headache, she stops feeling it until she leaves the stage. “I think that’s when [I know] I’m meant to do that,” Stalter says. Any pain goes away while she enacts God’s purpose for her. 

In Too Much, Stalter’s Jessica is a celebration of the show’s title. The character is caught between a manic id fueled equally by a painful breakup and the lust of new love, and the debilitating superego induced by the same life events. Jess records a series of videos she doesn’t intend to release, directly addressing the woman her ex is now engaged to (played by the comically hot Emily Ratajkowski), and whips herself into self-­sabotage by questioning her new relationship with Felix (Will Sharpe of The White Lotus Season Two fame), who is loosely based on Felber. Any time you fear things are getting unsustainably tumultuous, you need only remind yourself that every episode is a play on the title of a famous rom-com (e.g., “Notting Kill”) and that its creators are now happily married enough to want to work together.

“When I’m performing, something comes over me like a trance. That’s when I know I’m meant to do it.”

The show gives Stalter her first major leading role. She is perhaps the only person besides Dunham who could have played it, which is why Dunham wrote it for her. 

Andrew Scott, who also appears in Too Much, introduced Dunham to Stalter’s work. Dunham says he’d shown her Meg’s videos “in the heart of Covid and said, ‘Do you know this girl? She’s your sister.’ ” (Dunham does play Stalter’s onscreen sister, hilariously despondent after her husband decides to explore bisexuality and polyamory while she languishes in a series of increasingly sedentary supine positions.) “I became totally transfixed,” Dunham says. “Someone whose characters operate on the edge of delusional, on the edge of cringe, but is always ultimately in on the joke — that, to me, is my comedy DNA.” Dunham cites the characters David Brent on the U.K. Office, Patsy and Edina on Absolutely Fabulous, and Valerie Cherish of The Comeback as Stalter’s fictional ancestors.

Around 2022, Dunham DM’d Stalter on Instagram and said she had a project in mind. Stalter was a mega Girls fan and had felt a kinship with Dunham through the screen. “I’d connect to this person,” she’d thought about a hypothetical but unlikely future meeting while watching Dunham play Hannah Horvath, the series’ divisive protagonist. 

When Stalter and Dunham got on Zoom, Stalter’s instinct was confirmed. Dunham had made a deck of the show — kind of a mood board/game plan for a television series — and there were photos of Stalter on it as the main character. Then Dunham told Stalter, “Girls was about sex, and this is about love.” It was kismet; Stalter had met her now-partner only four months earlier and refers to her this way: “No one’s perfect except for my girlfriend.”

“We’re very different, just like Lena and Luis,” Stalter says. “When me and Lena first talked, we were bonding over that. I feel like I’m the Lena, and I’m the one bringing home a thing.

Stalter is referring to the chaos of her life, but sometimes the “thing” is literal. Imagining a conversation between Felber and Dunham, Stalter riffs, “She could be like, ‘Honey, I bought a pig today.’ And then he’s like [affectionately], ‘Oh, Lena.’ ” Working with the couple proved the premise of the show. “It just feels like Luis fully lets Lena, and Lena lets Luis, be exactly who they are,” Stalter says. “I think sometimes you could be with someone who likes all the differences.”

Top and Shoes by Reformation. Bra by Norma Kamali. Scarf by Mads Allen. Jewelry by Loren Stewart.

In her own menagerie, Stalter currently has two cats — one rather more aloof, and one hairless snuggler named Suki — and a dog called Bunny, who manages an anxiety disorder with medication and as much physical contact with Stalter as possible. On Too Much, Jess, like Dunham, has a bald dog, procured after giving up a rescue (in this case named Cutesie) because of behavioral issues. 

In 2017, Dunham went through several heinous press cycles, including one around the saga of her and then-partner Jack Antonoff’s real-life dog, Lamby, whom they surrendered to a canine rehabilitation center after multiple instances of aggression. In Too Much, Jess’ boyfriend forces her to “get rid” of their dog after it nearly bites someone. It’s one of many moments that invite a close read, especially in the context of Dunham’s autobiographical pieces of writing about her wrenching breakup with Antonoff and her subsequent move to London — the city where Stalter’s character decamps after the end of a relationship with a Jewish ex-boyfriend.

“People love when they see something and they’re like, ‘Is that from that person’s real life?’ ” Stalter says. “Even if it’s not all factual or it’s not literally a biography, someone so open about sharing their real experiences or at least putting them into certain characters, it’s really beautiful, because we get to learn about her. That’s why when I saw Girls, even though [Lena is] not Hannah, there’s parts of her in her stuff. That’s the most beautiful thing to see, someone who’s putting their heart and energy into something and you get to learn about them — but then you’re not taking everything that happened as truth.”

At the precipice of her highest-profile role yet, Stalter is contemplating what the project might mean for nonconsensual probing into her own life. People watching her videos is fine, because she has complete control over them, and people are seeing them in their homes. When audiences come to her stand-up shows, well, that’s what she’s always wanted, and the work is begetting fans who want to see more work. “It feels contained or something,” Stalter says. “And then with Hacks, it’s been so huge and life-changing. But in my mind, I could be safe because I’m not the lead in it.

“Lena is someone I’ve been such a huge fan of, so it was really crazy to wrap my mind around being in the show,” Stalter says slowly. “But then when I got to know her, she felt like a sister and a friend. So now the show feels like a play that we did for each other, and that this really contains a special thing.”

“Getting to know Lena, she felt like a sister and a friend. So now the show feels like a play that we did for each other.”

Sharpe remembers filming an episode — one of the best of the series — that takes place over one night, in Stalter’s character’s apartment. The couple has had sex too many times, and Sharpe’s character has hit his refractory limit. Sharpe’s line after aborting the encounter was supposed to be something like, “I’m in my thirties, queen. I’m all out.” After an exhausting day of filming, it came out, in a posh accent, as, “That’s me done for the evening, I’m afraid.” Stalter named this imaginary interloping gentleman “the Midnight Man,” and pointed out every time Sharpe strayed into Midnight Man territory during production. Then she made him a shirt with the moniker on it. “Because of the energy of Lena — and Meg, in particular — it put you in quite a positive, hopeful, loving mindset,” Sharpe says of shooting the series. “Just seeing the best in everything and in everyone.”

The setting allowed Stalter the confidence and space to play a role that both exercises her obvious comedic virtuosity and shows previously untapped dramatic ability, from dealing with insecurity (not a state expressed by a typical Stalter character) to a breakdown during a breakup. “Some of the stuff that’s in the show I feel is like, Oh! Nobody would ever see me do this if it wasn’t on TV,” Stalter says. “When you’re crying in your room alone, people don’t see that unless it’s on TV. I’m really crying.”

Embodying what Dunham describes as Stalter’s “incredible mix of warm/fuzzy and boundaried strength,” Stalter explains how she approached fictional sex with the advice of intimacy coordinator Miriam Lucia: “During kissing scenes or during vulnerable stuff, it’s not actually you, and you don’t have to do it the way you do, because you can save that part for yourself.” As for Stalter’s corporeal being — beautifully showcased on a series in which her character is implicitly contrasted with one played by an actual supermodel — she says, “I’m very about taking care of my body and being healthy, but I have not wanted to be skinny or lose weight for cosmetic reasons since high school.” A beacon for us all.

To make public the kind of deeply personal moments fostered by Dunham’s writing is, by definition, exposing. “It just feels really vulnerable,” Stalter says. “It’s hard or strange to think of it being on such a huge platform. It’s exciting … but also, just, Netflix is so big.”

Stalter points to her career-long luck of collaborating with people like Dunham and the Hacks team. “I’ve not worked with evil people,” she says. “I don’t know how.” But she also considers the world this project is opening her up to. “I think there is power in Hollywood that is gross,” she says. “There’s a lot of darkness in the industry, and things that can corrupt you, like money and power.” 

Stalter isn’t particularly concerned. “I feel so connected to God and grounded that I feel like I would not get swept up by anything in Hollywood,” she says.

Stalter sees herself representing — in her life, in a movie she’s developing called Church Girls, and in the “evil, crazy, weird villain” version of herself she plays onstage — people like her, who grew up with God in places like the Midwest, and who maybe didn’t finish college either. “Their lives are just as big as ours,” she says, finally daring to group herself in with her famous peers.

“I’m always going to be sensitive,” Stalter says. “I am still that little girl in middle school being like, ‘Why don’t they want to come to the Hawaiian party?’ But it’s like, there’ve been so many other parties.”

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Production Credits

Produced by PATRICIA BILOTTI at PBNY PRODUCTIONS. Styled by KAT TYPALDOS. Hair by ERICKA VERRETT at A-FRAME using ROZ. Makeup by MELISSA HERNANDEZ at A-FRAME using HAUS LABS. Photo assistants: SCOTT TURNER and SANDRA RIVERA. Styling assistant: LYDIA GINGRICH. Photographed at DUST STUDIOS



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Camp Mystic’s owner warned of floods for decades. Then the river killed him

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CNN
 — 

Dick Eastland warned for decades about the hidden dangers of the beautiful but volatile Guadalupe River, a peril he saw firsthand while running his family’s youth camp alongside its banks.

Eastland saw floods damage Camp Mystic again and again – and his pregnant wife was even airlifted to a hospital while the camp in central Texas was cut off by floodwaters.

He successfully pushed for a new flood warning system after 10 children at a nearby camp were swept to their deaths in 1987, and in recent years served on the board of the local river authority as it supported renewed efforts to improve warnings on the Guadalupe.

“The river is beautiful,” Eastland told the Austin American-Statesman in 1990. “But you have to respect it.”

But after 27 people were killed at Camp Mystic in last week’s cataclysmic flooding – along with Eastland himself, who died while trying to rescue his young campers – the scale of the tragedy highlights potential missed opportunities by Camp Mystic’s owners and government officials to better mitigate those risks.

About a decade after it was installed, the warning system Eastland had championed in the late ‘80s became antiquated and broken. The river authority ultimately shut it down in 1999, saying it was “unreliable with some of the system’s stations not reporting information,” according to an article in the Kerrville Daily Times.

Yet periodic attempts to adopt a more modern flood-monitoring system, including one with warning sirens that might have alerted campers last week, repeatedly failed to gain traction – stalled by low budgets, some local opposition and a lack of state support.

At Camp Mystic, meanwhile, several of the cabins that were hit hardest in the flooding were in an area identified by the federal government as the highest-risk location for inundations from the Guadalupe. Even as the camp built new cabins in a less-risky flood zone elsewhere on its property, nothing was done to relocate the buildings in the most danger.

“Camp officials might have not been aware of flood risk when they first built the cabins,” before the county even had flood maps, said Anna Serra-Llobet, a University of California-Berkeley researcher who studies flood risk. But after the recent construction, she said, officials should have realized they were in an area of “severe hazard.”

Eastland has been praised as a hero for his efforts to save campers on Friday and remembered as a beloved figure by generations who spent their summers in the idyllic riverside refuge. His legacy is less clear as a public steward of the sometimes deadly river that ultimately took his life.

“If he wasn’t going to die of natural causes, this was the only other way—saving the girls that he so loved and cared for,” his grandson George Eastland wrote in an Instagram tribute. “Although he no longer walks this earth, his impact will never fade in the lives he touched.”

Camp Mystic did not respond to a request for comment.

Camp Mystic has a long history with flooding, going back to just a few years after it was established 99 years ago.

In 1932, flood waters “swept away” several cabins at the camp and led campers to evacuate across the river by canoe, according to an article in the Abilene Daily Reporter. A counselor told the Austin American-Statesman at the time that campers might “have drowned if we had gone out the front door and walked face-into a sheet of water!”

In 1978, an article in the Kerrville Mountain Sun reported that Camp Mystic was “the most severely damaged” of local summer camps affected by a flood that year. A separate article reported that five Camp Mystic counselors “had their automobiles swept into the Guadalupe River” by flood waters that year.

And in 1985, Eastland’s wife Tweety, then pregnant with their fourth child, had to be airlifted from Camp Mystic to a hospital due to floodwaters, local news reported.

A volunteer holds a Camp Mystic t-shirt and pink backpack in Comfort, Texas, as search and rescue efforts continued on July 6.

One of the region’s most devastating floods – until last week’s Fourth of July disaster – came in 1987, when 10 children attending a different camp in the area were killed by floodwaters during a rushed evacuation.

Eastland, who at the time was serving on the board of the Upper Guadalupe River Authority, which manages the river, pushed for a new flood warning system. In newspaper articles, he described a computer-powered system that would lead to automatic alerts if water levels on the Guadalupe rose beyond a set limit.

The proposal was delayed, but officials eventually created a system of 21 gauges up and down the Guadalupe and its tributaries.

Even as Eastland voiced pride in the new system, he was quick to remind the public of the Guadalupe’s deadly power.

“I’m sure there will be other drownings,” Eastland said in a 1990 interview with the Austin American-Statesman. “People don’t heed the warnings.”

In the following years, the early flood warning system that Eastland advocated for – and was once considered state-of-the-art – started to suffer problems. In April 1998, the company that maintained the system “closed its doors without notice,” and the gauge system soon stopped functioning because of lack of maintenance, the Kerrville Daily Times reported.

In February 1999, the river authority shut the system down because it had become “unreliable with some of the system’s stations not reporting information,” and board members worried about “liability concerns that the system would send ‘false signals,’” according to an article in the Times.

A handful of river gauges remain in service on the Guadalupe today, but the county lacks a full-scale warning system to broadcast public alerts when floodwaters rise.

Kerr County officials, along with the river authority that Eastland periodically served on, worked to change that over the last decade, searching for funding for a flood warning system that included more river gauges and a network of sirens.

But they found themselves struggling to overcome funding deficits and opposition from some skeptical residents.

Grant applications for the system were denied by the state in 2016 and 2017, and the authority later decided not to pursue a separate grant after realizing that it would only cover five percent of the system’s cost.

Around the same time, Camp Mystic was embarking on an expansion project. As the number of girls attending the camp grew over the years – leading to waitlists to get in each summer – the camp built more than a dozen new cabins farther south of the Guadalupe River alongside the smaller Cypress Creek.

Some of those cabins were located in an area that the federal government has determined has a 1% chance of flooding each year, which would have required officials to get special approval from the county government to build there.

But the risk was even higher at some of Camp Mystic’s cabins closest to the Guadalupe, several of which are located inside the river’s “regulatory floodways” – the areas that flood first and are most dangerous – according to federal flood maps. Those cabins have been around for decades, historical aerial photos show, apparently before the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s first floodzone maps were developed.

Dealing with preexisting structures like these inside risky floodzones is especially challenging, said Serra-Llobet, the UC Berkeley flood expert.

“When they did the construction of the recent buildings, they should have seen the FEMA maps,” Serra-Llobet said. That, she said, was a “window of opportunity” where camp officials could have realized their decades-old dorms were in a high-hazard zone and acted to address it. Camp Mystic could have relocated the buildings to higher ground, or just turned them into structures for recreational activities and made sure that campers were sleeping in safer areas, she said.

Still, Serra-Llobet argued that Kerr County should move past the “blame game” that comes after any disaster and focus on the lessons that could be learned for protecting people from floods going forward.

It’s not clear whether Eastland personally grappled with the high-risk flood zone running through his own campground. But in recent years, he was part of continued efforts for an improved flood warning system for the region.

Eastland returned to the river authority’s board in 2022 after being appointed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. After the previous setbacks, the board this year moved forward with a proposal to create a new “centralized dashboard” of rainfall, river depth and other data sources “to support local flood monitoring and emergency response,” according to the county government.

In April, the river authority voted to hire a firm to develop the data system and had planned to begin work this month. That was postponed after last week’s disastrous flooding.

After Eastland was found dead, tributes have rolled in from his colleagues, community members and former campers whose lives he touched over the decades at Camp Mystic.

“Although I am devastated, I can’t say I’m surprised that you sacrificed your life with the hopes of someone else’s being saved,” Eastland’s grandson wrote in his Instagram post.

April Ancira spent summers from the age of 8 to 14 at Camp Mystic. In an interview, she remembered Eastland helping her catch a big fish – and being just as thrilled as she was when she successfully reeled it in.

“My memories of him wrapping his arms around so many campers and being so excited to see them excel is incredible,” she said.

Austin Dickson, who served on the river authority board along with Eastland and sat next to him at board meetings, remembered him as a “pillar in our county and our community” who had championed a recent effort to create a new park along the river.

“So many people say, ‘Mystic is my heaven,’ or ‘Mystic is a dreamland,’ and I think that’s true,” he said. “That’s Dick and Tweety’s life’s work to make that true.”

CNN’s Allison Gordon and Lauren Mascarenhas contributed reporting.





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Weekly News Quiz – AARP

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  1. Weekly News Quiz  AARP
  2. Measles Cases Hit Highest Total Since U.S. Eliminated the Disease  The New York Times
  3. U.S. measles cases hit 33-year high, CDC says  Axios
  4. US measles cases surpass 2019 count, while Missouri is latest state with an outbreak  AP News
  5. Opinion | Why it matters if the U.S. loses its measles elimination status  The Washington Post



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Prime Day Live: your last chance for deals on five-star headphones, stellar turntables, OLED TVs, Dolby Atmos soundbars and more

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One of our favourite streaming sticks has had its price slashed

(Image credit: Amazon)

We tend to recommend the Apple TV 4K as the best streaming box from a pure quality perspective.

But if that’s a bit rich for your blood, or you’re looking for a streamer to add smart TV powers to a bedroom/kitchen TV, or just prefer Amazon’s Fire OS to whatever is running your lounge set, then the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max is a fantastic choice.

This is especially true right now, as you can grab the streamer for just £40 at Amazon (save £30).

For your money you’ll get a competent streaming stick with an included remote that delivers solid picture quality and decent audio for everything but serious music listening.

Looking for a Dolby Atmos soundbar?

Sonos Arc

(Image credit: Future)

If you want a new Dolby Atmos soundbar, then there’s one in particular our TV and AV editor, Tom Parsons, recommends you look at – and keeping up the trend in this year’s Prime Day live blog, it’s not on a new flagship model.

Instead, if you want the best bang for your buck buying a Dolby Atmos soundbar, he recommends looking at the now retired Sonos Arc, which you can buy at Amazon for £489 – a huge £410 discount on its £899 regular price and the best we’ve seen across every retailer.

Why this one when we found the newer Sonos Arc Ultra offers better audio quality, especially at lower frequencies when we ran them head-to-head? Like our LG C4 OLED TV recommendation, it all comes down to our hallowed performance-per-pound metric.

The Arc isn’t as good as its Ultra sibling, but it is still an excellent performer that will elevate most home cinema setups. It’s also by far the best sounding you’ll find at its current price. So, for most people it’s the best option available right now.

Don’t go for gimmicks

Dyson OnTrac headphones on wooden table

(Image credit: What Hi-Fi?)

Prime Day always brings with it at least 10 terrible deals for every good one we recommend. A good example is the current discount it’s offering on Dyson’s wireless headphones.

Sure, there’s no denying The Dyson OnTrac is interesting and a strong opening effort from the British tech firm – especially considering its focus on vacuums.

But after testing them against the competition, we don’t recommend them to any serious music fan, even with their current discount – they’re down from £450 to just £359 at Amazon.

Trust us, we tested them against rivals and if audio quality is your priority there are multiple better sets available with healthy discounts that will serve you better. Here’s a shortlist of the ones we recommend considering.

If you want new headphones or earbuds, Sony has you covered

Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones next to their carry case

(Image credit: What Hi-Fi?)

Sony has made some of the best wireless headphones and best wireless earbuds we’ve tested this year. That’s why you’ll find so many of them recommended in our buying guides.

Which is why you may justifiably be after a set during Prime Day. If you are, our deputy editor, Andy Madden, has some good news and advice.

First, pretty much every Sony set we’ve checked has had some form of Prime Day discount. Second, some of the best are on sets we’ve fully reviewed and wholeheartedly recommend.

As a key team member that helped review them, these are the ones Andy recommends most.

If you’re picking between LG OLEDs we have some advice

65-inch LG C4 TV photographed straight-on on a wooden stand. On the screen is an image of a golfer celebrating.

(Image credit: What Hi-Fi? / Netflix, Full Swing)

LG OLED TVs are always a hot item, especially during sales events. And this Prime Day is no different. Over the past week we’ve seen savings appear on the firm’s ever-popular C-line of TVs in particular.

And while many of you may be tempted to take advantage of the current, and atypically early discount doing the rounds on the newest, five-star, 55-inch LG C5 – which is available at Amazon for £1699 ($1599.99 in the US / AU$2920 in Australia) – our editor would advise caution before pulling the trigger.

This is because there’s a much more impressive discount available on its, still excellent predecessor, the LG C4. Specifically, you can grab the 55-inch LG C4 at Amazon now for a significantly cheaper £859 ($1096.99 in the US / N/A Australia). That’s a massive £1240 saving on its launch price.

Having tested both, while the C5 does offer better peak brightness levels and better colour volumes, especially during low light scenes, its perks don’t justify such a huge gap in price. Which is why we’re recommending most of you go for the LG C4.

Remember it’s not just about Amazon

A woman flicking through stacks of vinyl records in a Rough Trade shop.

(Image credit: Rough Trade)

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – Amazon is not always the best place to find top savings on hi-fi, especially if you’re after something beyond entry level.

That’s why if you regularly read What Hi-Fi? you will know many of the deals we recommend come from specialist retailers including Richer Sounds, Sevenoaks Sound and Vision, Peter Tyson and more.

This remains true on Prime Day. So much so, that our hi-fi and audio editor, Kashfia Kabir, and TV and AV editor, Tom Parsons, both penned lists detailing the top savings they’ve found on said specialists – and as expected, many beat what you’ll find on Amazon.

These include:

So make sure to give other stores a check and make sure the deal you’ve spotted on Amazon is actually the best price available before you pull the trigger.

Meet the team looking after this live blog!

What Hi-Fi? Alastair Stevenson profile pic

Alastair Stevenson

Alastair is What Hi-Fi?’s editor in chief. He has well over a decade’s experience as a journalist working in both B2C and B2B press. During this time, he’s covered everything from the launch of the first Amazon Echo to government cybersecurity policy. Prior to joining What Hi-Fi?, he served as Trusted Reviews’ editor-in-chief. Alastair is in the process of turning his newly converted attic into a full-blown cinema room, so he walks the walk just as much as he talks the talk.

Andy Madden author bio pic

Andy Madden is one of the most seasoned and senior members of the What Hi-Fi? editorial team. Though he’s reviewed pretty much every category we cover in his career, in the past few years, he’s become one of our main headphone expert. Whether it’s a pair of premium wireless headphones from Focal or an affordable but musical set of earbuds, he’ll be on hand here offering his expert advice on which is the best pair to get.

Kashfia Kabir

Kashfia Kabir

Kash is the veteran professional shiny things chaser who runs our hi-fi and audio section. She first joined What Hi-Fi? 13 years and has spent a good chunk of that time reviewing everything from premium stereo amplifiers and turntables to affordable DACs and speakers. If you’re after some hi-fi this Prime Day, she’s the person you want to speak to.

A photo of What Hi-Fi? journalist Tom Parsons. He is wearing an unbuttoned shirt over a t-shirt, has shoulder-length dark hair and is smiling at the camera.

Tom Parsons

Tom Parsons has been writing about TV, AV and hi-fi products for over 18 years. He began his career as What Hi-Fi?’s Staff Writer and is now the TV and AV Editor. Tom is a huge fan of OLED TVs and Dolby Atmos speaker packages, but he also loves budget kit that punches above its price tag and appreciates lifestyle-friendly gear that allows more people to get a great home cinema experience at home.

Lewis Empson author profile image

Lewis Empson

Lewis Empson is a Senior Staff Writer on What Hi-Fi?. He was previously Gaming and Digital Editor for Cardiff University’s Quench Magazine. Lewis graduated in 2021 and worked on a selection of lifestyle magazines and regional newspapers before joining the What Hi-Fi? team. He is an avid gamer and movie-lover, and a champion of the 4K Blu-ray format.

Harry McKerrell headshot

Harry McKerrell

Though he’s the youngest member of our audio team, Harry brings a fresh perspective to our coverage. Though he initially focused on reviewing headphones, he has since branched out and helped us test everything from record players to floorstanding speakers to all-in-one systems. This gives him a fantastic holistic knowledge of the hi-fi market.

robyn quick headshot

Robyn Quick is a Staff Writer for What Hi Fi?. After graduating from Cardiff University with a postgraduate degree in magazine journalism, they have worked for a variety of film and culture publications. In their spare time, Robyn can be found playing board games too competitively, going on cinema trips and learning muay thai.

It’s the final countdown

Europe – The Final Countdown (Official Video) – YouTube
Europe - The Final Countdown (Official Video) - YouTube


Watch On

Prime Day has been a marathon, not a sprint, this year. But all signs suggest Amazon is planning on having its 2025 sales event end with a bang, not a whimper.

Which is why we’d strongly recommend keeping an eye on it and rival specialist retailers’ deals sections, as we’re expecting a wave of new deals, or deeper discounts on products that have already had their prices slashed.

As a word of advice, if you’re looking for a new pair of wireless headphones, we’d suggest looking at older models in particular. Some of the best discounts we’ve seen this week have targeted outgoing, but still very capable sets.

These include a massive saving on the older Sony models.

If you want a set of over-ears, the Sony WH-1000XM5 are available at Amazon now for £249 (save £131).

If in-ear’s your game, then there’s a solid discount on the Sony WF-C700N, which you can also nab at Amazon five-star, Sony WF-C700N for £55 – a £45 saving on their launch price.

They may not be the latest models, but we can personally confirm they are both still very capable options that will meet most music fans’ needs.



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