Nobody Wants This review -- has Netflix cracked the TV romcom? Staff, 10/1/2024 Nobody Wants This, Netflix's charming new romcom, follows a young rabbi torn between faith and love for a gentile podcaster. With sharp wit and strong chemistry between leads Adam Brody and Kristen Bell, it navigates cultural clashes with humor, avoiding clichés while delivering relatable laughs and heartfelt moments. Noah Roklov is not just a good Jewish boy, but the one who puts the rest of us to shame. As a young, reform rabbi and captain of the Matzah Ballers basketball team he's adored by Torah-studying tweens and old kvetchers alike. Naturally he dotes on his mother, while other mothers try to make him their son-in-law. Trouble is, Noah has recently become infatuated with the gentile Joanne, who's not only a shiksa but a sex podcaster to boot.
Though it may sound like the start of a bad joke, "a rabbi and a blonde go to a party" is in fact the basic set-up of the sincerely charming new Netflix series, Nobody Wants This. Loosely inspired by writer-creator Erin Foster's own interfaith relationship, it's obviously not the first tale where irrepressible chemistry and incompatible cultures collide, nor even the first to feature "shiksappeal" (a term coined on the sitcom Seinfeld). But if it rarely deviates from the established formulas or subverts expectations, the 10-part romcom successfully gets sparks to fly and jokes to land.
Much of that is thanks to the individual charisma and effervescent interactions of its two leads, Adam Brody and Kristen Bell, who having fronted teen dramas The OC and Veronica Mars in the mid-2000s, now trade wry, witty flirtations like a millennial Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal (or Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, if you prefer). Both bring spontaneity to a slightly-too-snappy script, and naturalism to characters that are neatly polarised: he the sage (if unusually suave) man of god, she the uninhibited, outspoken woman of earthly pleasures. It's a dynamic which Fleabag fans already know all too well.
Where these differences are initially a source of attraction, they inevitably result in conflicts both existential and familial. As Noah finds himself caught between his faith and his passion, tradition and change, Joanne must contend with being the woman who comes between a Jewish mother (Tovah Feldshuh) and her "beautiful, beautiful son". That the show leans into such stereotypes might have been grating were it not done with such affection and genuine good humour.
Gags about Ashkenazi "delicacies", gnawing generational guilt and taking undue pride in surprisingly Semitic celebrities will obviously resonate for some viewers more than others. But at times the show goes too far the other way, skirting over the details of Noah's job to such a degree you almost forget he's meant to be a rabbi, thus diluting the very specificities that make central relationship unique.
Yet while Noah and Joanne shift from two distinct personalities into a slightly conventional romcom couple, a terrific ensemble of sidekicks and cynics -- including the lovers' respective siblings played by scene-stealers Justine Lupe and Timothy Simons -- keep the schmaltz safely at bay.
