Review of “Nobody Wants This” – The cheerful romantic comedy by Kristen Bell and Adam Brody is as funny as “When Harry Met Sally” | Television

Te have had three really cute encounters in my TV life. One was when Harry met Sally (whatever he and she thought of it and of each other at the time. People!). The second was the dog-hurting boob flash to Colin in Accounts (you really should have seen that one) two years ago. The third is between Joanne (Kristen Bell) and Noah (Adam Brody) in the new Netflix comedy Nobody Wants This.

I'm telling you, everyone wants this. It's the funniest, sweetest, most offensive, most romantic, most real thing we've seen since, well, since Colin from Accounts. Bell plays a free-spirited woman in her 30s who hosts an increasingly successful podcast about sex and relationships with her sister Morgan (Justine Lupe) (latest episode – Dildo's and Dildon'ts). She's as agnostic—pretty much an atheist—as any other 30-something non-Jew walking around town. Brody plays a rabbi who just broke up with his long-term girlfriend, who, as well as both of her families, expected him to propose to her shortly. Noah is a progressive rabbi, but one who—”while I'm exaggerating the Torah bad-boy vibe”—makes it clear that he's “fully in it.” He and Joanne meet at a party and the attraction is instant, mutual and increasingly difficult to resist. It's also the rarest of things – it completely wins over the audience.

Brody and Bell have worked together before and are friends in real life, which certainly helps, but their chemistry onscreen—in the romantic scenes, sure, but more importantly and more impactful in the teasing, bantering conversations in between—is special and a joy to watch. “Can you have sex?” she asks him as he walks her to her car. “Yeah. That's what priests are like. We're just regular people. And we're trying to repopulate a people, you know?” A little later, she tells him, “Say something rabbinical.” He leans toward her… “Fiddler on the Roof.” “Don't be funny,” she replies. “That doesn't help.” At this point, I'm already willing to sacrifice my favorite pet to make sure these two get together. Bell and Brody are accomplished comedians and stage actors in their own ways, but together they are even more than the sum of their parts.

And they're surrounded by a fantastic supporting cast. First among equals is Lupe – so understatedly wonderful as Willa in Succession – as Joanna's more jaded sister and co-host. The fact that they're twosomes up against a terrible dating world and their parents (“Dad's gay and Mom's still in love with him”) doesn't diminish their honesty and bickering one bit. “Joanne was a lesbian for a year,” Morgan tells prospective podcast investors, sparking another argument. “That's when she really blossomed.” You'd listen to her podcast avidly.

Noah has a brother, Sasha (Timothy Simons, a bear of a man with the nimblest comedic timing imaginable), who has all of Noah's warmth, less of his intellectualism, and is happily married to his Jewish wife Esther (Jackie Tohn) and their children – and just as happily terrorized by them. Their deep, underlying marital harmony is portrayed as convincingly as any other part of the show. It's always refreshing to see a comedy that doesn't feel the need to belittle the settled state of things just because its protagonists are still in the initial, obviously more exciting phase.

Creator Erin Foster's obvious love and care for her characters, the fact that the show was born out of her own experience as a non-Jew falling in love with a Jewish man (not a rabbi, but she converted for him), and a script full of awesomeness mean she gets away with jokes that would otherwise be too risqué. A now almost traditional faux pas – the inadvertent private text message sent over car Bluetooth speakers, this time from Morgan to Joanne, about how Noah doesn't look Jewish while Sasha is “brutal” – sets off an explosion of responses from the delighted brothers. “There are some very attractive Jews! Ever seen a young Mandy Patinkin?” “Doesn't my brother look like he could control the media?” asks Sasha. “I apologize for my sister,” says Joanne, sitting in the passenger seat next to Morgan. “Who I have since cut off contact with.”

Beneath it all, the emotional burden feels real. The couple's different cultures, the lack of faith as opposed to religion as a driving force, the disapproval of families, the potential ostracism, the potential impact on Noah's career, the restriction of Joanne's freedom if she did become a rabbi's wife – these are real problems, obstacles to happiness for which there are no obvious answers. But I will be with them until, hopefully, it is not a bitter end. Just like my pets.