If you are in need of a modern romcom that makes you bark with laughter and leaves you embarrassingly gooey inside, do yourself a favour: cancel your plans and binge Netflix’s Nobody Wants This.
Based on the writer Erin Foster’s experiences, it follows a new relationship between an outspoken sex podcaster, Joanne (Kristen Bell), and a weed-smoking rabbi, Noah (Adam Brody), which is something neither of their families understand or want. Cue 10 moreish episodes that tell a classic will-they-won’t-they tale – and, trust me, by the end, you really hope that they will.
It has all the vital ingredients: Joanne and Noah fancy the pants off each other from the moment they meet, sparking genuine, fun chemistry, but the obstacle in love’s path – key for any great romcom – is that, if he wants to be head rabbi, Noah needs to marry a Jewish woman.
That is just for starters. The supporting cast is hilarious. Succession’s Justine Lupe is in her best role yet, stealing each scene as Joanne’s razor-tongued taller sister and podcast co-host, Morgan. There are acerbic observations on dating aplenty: “She broke her wrist for attention. It was a very high-level move. I respect it,” Joanne says of Noah’s ex. And scenes such as the podcast research trip to a sex shop will have you cackling like a witch brewing a love potion: “Grab the biggest butt plug you can find!” Noah calls to Joanne while waving around a vibrator called The Obliterator. “Rabbi Roklov?” asks a synagogue donor who has just walked in.
The biggest gift, though, is Brody, in his most lovable role since capturing millennial teen hearts as Seth Cohen in The OC. Hello, Hot Rabbi!
“You call him Hot Rabbi? Oh my God, that makes me so proud,” Joanne says to a group of teenage girls at a camp. One admits she pretended to choke so that he would perform CPR. “Genius,” nods Joanne.
It’s understandable. Hot Rabbi makes great pasta. He calls a hotel to make sure there are two robes in the bathroom, because Joanne really wants them to be matching on their first trip away. He is honest about his emotions. He is funny (even Morgan agrees). He is the right amount of daft (“The thing about nipples is that when it’s cold, you’d think they’d go in instead of out”). He is rich. He has a nice little beard. He isn’t scared of butt plugs. He is nice without being too nice (he is delighted to learn that Mr Goldberg from the sex shop was with a woman who wasn’t his wife). He is in a basketball team he named the Matzah Ballers. He even manages to reverse the ick (“You can self-sabotage all you want, but I think you should get over it,” he tells Joanne, who is disgusted by his “sport coat”). He is basically Seth Cohen, but better.
“If you’re gonna have a romcom with a rabbi, you gotta make him hot,” Foster has said. “No one I’ve ever met has ever known a hot rabbi. I think that there should be more hot rabbis. And so I just wanted to give Jewish girls the thing they deserve, which is a hot rabbi to look up to.”
On casting Brody as a character based on her husband, she added: “My husband is someone who can’t make you feel bad; like, it’s not possible. He just shines this sweetness and goodness and makes people feel seen, and makes you laugh, and I was trying to capture that feeling to pair him with this cynical character … Adam was the only one who had that purity about him.”
Brody’s response to it all? “Rabbis have not been sexually objectified enough and I’m trying to do my part,” he deadpanned at a screening.
Of course, Hot Rabbi isn’t the first holy man to make TV audiences swoon. Andrew Scott’s Hot Priest walked in Fleabag so that Brody’s Hot Rabbi could run, but special mentions should also go to Sidney Chambers, James Norton’s crime-solving vicar in Grantchester, and Friar Fuck (Costas Mandylor) in Sex and the City.
The reason for these “horn storms” is, according to Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge, that these characters are good at “really, really listening”. That is definitely true of Hot Rabbi: when Joanne explains her biggest fear about their relationship to him, his reassuring response made me race to the freezer for the ice tray.
Will we be seeing more of him? Judging by that ending, it’s likely that a second season will work its way in to our hearts. As Noah’s brother, Sasha (Timothy Simons), says: “God speed, Hot Rabbi.”
