LONDON — Though I hate it, I’ve seen every episode of “Emily in Paris” — and I’m counting down the days until September 12, when Netflix shows the rest of Season Four. While watching the first half of the most recent outing, I began to wonder: Would “Emily in Paris” work as “well” — that is, be as giddily, gladly, maddeningly bad — if it were set in London?

Well, for a start, Americans have a previous penchant for Paris, from 1891 — when, in “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” Oscar Wilde wrote, “When good Americans die, they go to Paris” — right up till Gershwin’s “An American in Paris.” Scriveners from Hemingway to Jim Morrison went there to feel more like writers.

The common language the UK and America share makes London feel more homely, which isn’t what one is  looking for when one runs away from home, whereas a different tongue can make most things more seductive.

“Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” is probably far more appealing to the tender American sensibility than the habitual “Fancy a shag?” which is the mating call in our fair capital. The culture of Britain is essentially masculine, as befits the first industrial nation, whereas France is built far more on tourism, a service industry which could be seen as more stereotypically feminine. 

It’s funny to think that Paris flourishes because of the “hospitality” industry; to get over this wound to pride, it takes pride in being inhospitable. We like beer and pubs; they like wine and pavement cafes. We are grittier, famous to American youth of the late 20th century for punk; only in the Swinging Sixties did we briefly outdo Paris as the sexiest capital city.

Alfie, Emily’s English boyfriend, is named with a nod to the 1960s London lothario. The scornful things he says about the hyped-up appeal of Paris are the show’s only moments of insight. Emily, though, doesn’t hear him, all the while mooning after her French chef neighbor.

Even the problems in Paris are sexy. So when her shower doesn’t work, she has to use his. Emily’s Paris is safe, and the locations manipulated to keep it so; the Paris insiders I know were driven especially nuts by the showing of Metro line 6 crossing the Seine with an Eiffel Tower view and right after that the 18th arrondissement, as if it was the same neighborhood.

A friend who lived there says Emily’s is a Disneyfied Paris that only exists in the minds of 12-year-old girls who live at Omaha or Kuala Lumpur. My own experience of the French capital is a poignant one.

After a lifetime of loathing the French — it’s the law here — one of the best yet most disorientating trips of my life was to Paris shortly after the Islamist massacre of 2015. I’d been there before and found it hilariously supercilious; this time it was different. 

Having read that France had already lost 2 million euros worth of business due to a wave of cancellations at hotels and a lack of customers in restaurants, I wanted to show willingness, and to show support, when I read that Parisiennes were trending the hashtag #TousAuBistrot — “Everyone to the bar/cafe/restaurant.”

It was unsettling to hear one’s English accent greeted with a shocked smile and a painstaking “Cheers” instead of a sneer; the gargantuan measures, the bottles given where only a couple of glasses were bought, the waiter who called out as we left “We love you very much for coming here!”

We stopped at visibly touristy joints for lunch, except that we were the only visible tourists; around us everyone talked French, gesturing, shrugging, chucking the vino back while dressed in office clothes — just out for their lunch hour, it seemed. “Here’s one the Boche won’t drink” was a toast we learned from our new French friends.

Clichés are comforting, so I understand why “Emily In Paris” is so keen on them in these uncertain times. Yet this is also what makes it look more like a period drama than a contemporary show. The capitals of Europe now have far more in common than they have in contrast, riven by fear and mistrust of everyone from migrants to tourists to terrorists.

Because of this, “Emily in Past-Times” might be a more accurate title. London and Paris are united, for once, in their nostalgia for an easier way of life once lived in both our beautiful cities. So that must be why I never miss an episode; what I thought was a hate-watch was a comfort-watch, all along.