Kristen Bell and Adam Brody charm in the next big romantic comedy.

A raunchy podcast host and an attractive, newly single rabbi walk into a lesbian dinner party…stop me if you’ve heard this before. What happens next, naturally, is the beginning of a complicated romance. The new Netflix series Nobody wants this It may start out as a bad joke (even the characters joke about the strange setup), but it ends up being a surprisingly good watch. Considering that the show stars two of America’s sweethearts as lovers (Kristen Bell plays podcaster Joanne and Adam Brody plays Rabbi Noah), I’d even go so far as to say that this is the next big romantic comedy we’ve ever seen. been waiting. for.

Romantic comedies begin and end with chemistry. Luckily, Bell and Brody have that in abundance, along with plenty of charm. Fans of both actors (a Venn diagram I’m sure looks more like a circle) can attest that these Hollywood darlings, who first captured audiences’ hearts on teen shows, excel at a specific type of humor. They imbue their characters with a well-balanced mix of endearing sarcasm, slight self-deprecation, and understated charisma. This quality, of course, makes them perfect scene partners for a comically tortured adventure. Their chemistry sizzles on screen: When Joanne and Noah meet at dinner, hosted by their mutual friend Ashley (Sherry Cola), they immediately engage in a sarcasm-filled tennis match.

But it’s more than that: we know, having seen glimpses of their lives, that they have both suffered from partners who can’t keep up with their rapid-fire banter, and that they find in each other an immediate kinship, a rare mutual understanding. Although they have just met and are exchanging humorous lies about their lives, their banter and energy seem honest. And it’s honest in a way that Brody and Bell were meant to embody: When Noah explains that he meets Ashley through a neighborhood watch program, which makes them “basically both Karens,” Bell’s expression of a simple “Oh, wow” is pitch perfect. . It’s clear that some Hollywood executive should have cast these two together years ago.

Beyond its stars, Nobody wants this achieves what is key in a good romantic comedy: a cast of delightfully funny supporting characters. Cola delivers funny banter as Ashley, but Joanne’s life is even more livened up by her sister Morgan (Succession‘s Justine Lupe) and for the complex dynamic between her parents, whose marriage ended when her father, Henry (Michael Hitchcock), came out as gay, leaving her mother, Lynn (Stephanie Faracy), single and still very much in love with her ex. husband. Meanwhile, Noah’s life is overseen not only by his overbearing Russian mother, Bina (Tovah Feldshuh), but also by his self-proclaimed “loser brother,” Sasha (veep‘s Timothy Simons) and Sasha’s wife, Esther (Jackie Tohn). Noah finds himself in a difficult situation at the beginning of the show: he has just ended a long-term relationship with a Jewish woman whom his family adored (and who is also Esther’s best friend). Naturally, his family is against him dating Joanne, a gentile, and specifically one who talks openly, for public consumption, about sex and dating. But the deeper problem is that the optics of their relationship could jeopardize his role as chief rabbi of his synagogue. Similarly, Morgan worries that Joanne’s relationship with Noah will make her too boring to host her tell-all podcast.

If this sounds like a series filled with stereotypes to varying degrees, well, maybe. But within this outlandish cacophony of people trying to control Joanne and Noah’s formidable journey toward love is a deft comedy that investigates the possibility of coexisting with loved ones, even while actively testing their long-held belief systems. a long time. With so many comedy veterans in its cast, the show easily navigates through funny bits: Joanne’s attempts to get on Esther’s good side with a strategy reminiscent of bad girls‘ Cady Heron plans to win over Regina George; Bina and Joanne wage a silent war over whether Joanne and Noah’s couple will go the distance; and, in one episode, Noah has to get over giving Joanne “the creeps” by meeting her parents (and her father’s surprise new boyfriend) for the first time. Meanwhile, in the context of all these characters wanting different things for themselves, there are two people who vacillate between wondering if this will ultimately be the relationship that survives and believing that it will, all before they’ve mustered the courage to say “I love you.” “

However, despite the show’s occasionally ridiculous tone, what it really does Nobody wants this The special thing is that it seems to take place in the real world. The series may not address complex, award-bait-level conversations, but it does explore genuine questions: What does it mean to be religious today? What are the effects of disclosing all aspects of your life to the public? What does it mean to be an interloper in another person’s culture or community? At what point does it make sense to give up an idea of ​​what your career should be for the possibility of a life you already have in front of you? Religious differences, family disapproval: these things have destroyed many couples. What’s at stake ought they feel high because are. But instead of making a big moral claim by answering those questions, the show uses these identifiable moral dilemmas as a playground. Ridiculously exaggerates “what if?” scenarios and allows us to see love blossom in a circus of incongruous circumstances without constantly fearing the worst. With 10 episodes of less than 30 minutes each, Nobody wants this goes down without problems, and the only thing that leaves us wanting is more he.