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Louise Thomas
Editor
A rabbi and a sex podcaster walk into a dinner party. No, that’s not the set-up for a convoluted joke with a dubious punchline, but the premise for Nobody Wants This, Netflix’s new odd couple romcom series.
Kristen Bell is Joanne, a serial dater whose often risque anecdotes are prime fodder for the podcast she hosts with her younger sister Morgan (Justine Lupe). Adam Brody is Noah, a progressive rabbi who has just ended a long-term relationship (one that his family seemed to be more invested in than he did). When they meet at a mutual friend’s house, they hit it off. But can this spark translate into something longer term, when they seem – on the surface, at least – to be moving in such different directions?
Unlikely pairings aren’t exactly rare in the romcom world: it’s a genre that’s practically built on the concept that opposites attract, and that the two very good-looking people who have buckets of chemistry but very different lives (or just slightly different wardrobes) might actually have more in common than they realise. But Nobody Wants This has the advantage of being rooted in reality. Show creator Erin Foster converted to Judaism when she married her husband, so she has first-hand experience of all the highs and lows of a culture-clash love story.
A few obvious tropes are present and correct. Yes, Joanne accidentally brings a pork platter as a gift when meeting her in-laws for the first time (“I thought prosciutto was fancy Italian beef”). Yes, Noah’s mum is very much the stereotypical “Jewish mother”. And yes, everything comes to a head at a disastrous end-of-season bat mitzvah ceremony (oy vey).
But there is also plenty of room for less predictable comic moments that are sharply observed, and sometimes hilariously, devastatingly relatable: one episode devoted to the “ick” that Joanne sustains when watching Noah try really, really hard to impress her parents (by wearing a “sports blazer” and accidentally adopting an exaggerated accent for emphasis) is by turns laugh-out-loud funny and utterly cringe-inducing.
And if you can just about always trace the trajectory that each snappy, half-an-hour-or-under instalment will take, the journey is always an enjoyable one. This is a show with clever characterisation and a winning eagerness to embrace off-beat scenarios, like when Joanne ends up taking romantic advice from a scathing group of teens attending the summer camp where Noah is teaching (“I want to be empowered and confident when I’m middle-aged,” one of them tells her disparagingly). Noah’s faith is also treated thoughtfully, rather than simply as a source of punchlines. A scene in which he explains why he decided to become a rabbi is unexpectedly moving.
Fans of The Good Place already know that Bell is an irresistible comic performer, and she lends Joanne an appealing blend of chaotic energy and vulnerability (“Do you think I’m good enough to be with someone who’s, like, really good?” she asks Morgan at one point). Brody also effortlessly slots into the role of romcom leading man; you wonder why he hasn’t done so more often. The supporting cast is a delight too. Lupe got to show off her deadpan comic timing as Connor Roy’s wife Willa in Succession, but she is just as good here with a far breezier character; her oddball dynamic with Sasha (Veep’s Timothy Simons), Noah’s older brother, is wonderful.
The whole thing is an enjoyable mix of romcom escapism and sometimes acerbic realism. Joanne and Noah are a couple you want to root for. I get the feeling the show’s title won’t be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
