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    How ‘Nobody Wants This’ Became Netflix’s Latest Hit

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    The Netflix rom-com checks every genre box, but it became a megahit by offering versions of everything you already like on TV.Two leads with nostalgia power. A meet cute. A series of fish-out-of-water mishaps, some of which rely on an almost alarming level of ignorance or ineptitude. A party that goes awry — probably from too much stress. (Probably a wealthy, maybe even icy woman has caused this stress.) Her: Frazzled, into her phone. Him: Safe, sensitive, sage.Make it about Christmas, and you have a Hallmark Channel original. Make it about interfaith romance, and it’s Netflix’s latest hit “Nobody Wants This.”A romantic comedy that checks every genre box, “Nobody” is about the star-crossed attraction between Joanne, a Los Angeles podcast host played by Kristen Bell, and Noah, a soulful rabbi played by Adam Brody. Since arriving on Netflix late last month, it has remained at or near the top of the service’s most-watched chart, sharing space with a show from the darker end of the replication factory, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.”“Nobody” has generated as much coverage as that grisly docudrama, thanks partly to its charms and partly to its shortcomings, namely its depictions of Jewish women that rely on hoary stereotypes.The draw of “Nobody,” though, is not that the show is so distinctive, it’s that it is so familiar. Rom-coms have thrived on streaming as they have mostly fallen out of fashion in theaters, and for this particular genre “formulaic” is no great diss — it is perhaps the opposite. (“Nobody” isn’t even the best opposites-attract rom-com to arrive on TV recently — that would be Season 2 of “Colin From Accounts,” on Paramount+.) Beyond the show’s ample joys and persistent irritants — “What about our podcast?” is this show’s “can MomTok survive this?” — there’s a Goldilocks ease to the endeavor that one can see as either finely honed or algorithmically precooked; simply reheat and enjoy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Nobody Wants This’ Review: Resuscitating the Rom-Com

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      Kristen Bell and Adam Brody star in a Netflix series whose familiar rhythms and punchlines are exactly the point.Recent high-profile attempts by streamers to resuscitate the feature-length romantic comedy with brand-name performers like Anne Hathaway, Nicole Kidman and Brooke Shields have all had the same problem: They were awful. The dead touch of cringey mediocrity could be felt immediately. You could hear the flatline alarm in the background.Primed for disappointment by those films, you feel the difference right away with the new Netflix romantic comedy series “Nobody Wants This”: It’s not bad. The jokes land. The story hums along. The people in it are real-ish — they may do cartoonish things, but they are not cartoons. Kristen Bell and Adam Brody, who play the central couple, are charming and work well together. Care has been taken in the depiction of a swoony, twilight Los Angeles that calls back to an indeterminate earlier era of the rom-com — the ’70s, the ’90s, somewhere in there.Created by Erin Foster, an actress and writer and a daughter of the music-business titan David Foster, “Nobody Wants This” (premiering Thursday) succeeds by keeping faith with its genre. It is not a nostalgic curio — the characters and the rhythms of their interactions feel up-to-date, at least by mainstream Hollywood standards — but there is a comforting continuity with things you have seen and liked before. Familiar moves are executed with confidence and a certain amount of style.That smooth rom-com fluency, and the feeling it inspires that here is something we have been missing, is the most notable thing about “Nobody Wants This.” The story, inspired by Foster’s own experiences as a podcaster and as a participant in the Los Angeles dating scene, is serviceable, largely rom-com standard but with a few wrinkles.Bell plays Joanne, who works a bad-girl, more-sarcastic-than-thou persona while apparently making a living doing a sex-and-relationships podcast with her sister, Morgan (Justine Lupe). At a dinner party, Joanne, who is not in any way religious, meets cute with her temperamental opposite, Brody’s Noah, a serious, soulful, inordinately considerate guy who happens to be a rabbi. (He is sometimes called the hot rabbi, reminiscent of Andrew Scott’s hot priest in “Fleabag.”)They are completely wrong for each other, as everyone else in the show loudly and insistently tells them (hence the title). Morgan, a serial dater herself, is anti-Noah because she is afraid of losing her sister, not to mention being one-upped by her; adding a layer of complication, Morgan is also convinced that if Joanne finds happiness, it will ruin their podcast.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      5 Books to Read After Watching ‘Nobody Wants This’

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      These romance novels feature cross-cultural connections, charming banter and plenty of heart.There’s a long history in Hollywood of cross-cultural rom-coms — films and TV shows such as “Keeping the Faith,” “Bend It Like Beckham” and “The Nanny” that mine clashing traditions to find hilarity and heart. Colliding heritages naturally lend themselves to moments of comedic gold: Just think of a nonplused Andrea Martin in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” reassuring John Corbett’s vegetarian leading man, “That’s OK: I make lamb.”The series “Nobody Wants This,” which premieres on Netflix on Sept. 26, is the latest entry into this oeuvre. Joanne (Kristen Bell) is an agnostic, sex-positive podcast host with a history of toxic relationships; Noah (Adam Brody — Mr. Chrismukkah himself, no stranger to interfaith high jinks) is a pot-smoking rabbi with a fiercely protective mother who spends his free time playing basketball with the Matzah Ballers. Their story is as much about the universal awkwardness and hilarity of a budding romance as it is about the complex differences in their worldviews.Interfaith and cross-cultural romances are nothing new in the literary sense, either. If you’re craving more stories about clever people drawn together by chemistry and circumstance who also face the difficult work of navigating disparate backgrounds, these romance novels have got you covered.I think hot rabbis may be the new hot priestsThe Intimacy ExperimentBy Rosie DananNaomi Grant is a bisexual adult film actress with a master’s degree who runs a successful online sex-ed platform; she wants to expand into live seminars, but she’s having trouble finding an institution to support her. Enter Ethan Cohen, an unconventional (and very attractive) straight rabbi who invites Naomi to teach a course on human sexuality and relationships at his synagogue — a gamble aimed at reaching more young Jewish people and saving his dwindling congregation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      27 TV Shows to Watch This Fall

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      A “WandaVision” spinoff, Colin Farrell in “The Penguin” and Alfonso Cuarón’s “Disclaimer” are among the season’s tantalizing offerings.The fall television season is short on blockbuster titles — a “Star Wars” extension, “Skeleton Crew,” from Disney+, and perhaps HBO’s as-yet-unscheduled “Dune: Prophecy.” But there is plenty that’s of interest, including Alfonso Cuarón’s return to television with “Disclaimer” on Apple TV+, Colin Farrell’s incarnation of the Penguin for HBO and Kathryn Hahn’s reboot of her “WandaVision” character in “Agatha All Along” for Disney+. There will also be new seasons of offbeat but proven comedies like “Bad Sisters” on Apple TV+, “Somebody Somewhere” on HBO and “What We Do in the Shadows,” which, unlike its vampire heroes, will perish after its sixth season on FX. Here are 25 shows to keep an eye out for this fall, in chronological order; all dates are subject to change.September‘THE OLD MAN’ In Season 2 of this melancholy spy thriller, Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow return as former C.I.A. colleagues and improbable action buddies — the two actors’ average age is 76, and Lithgow’s character once hired a hit man to kill Bridges’s. (With 76-year-old Kathy Bates starring in CBS’s “Matlock” reboot, it’s a good season for septuagenarians.) (FX, Sept. 12)‘HOW TO DIE ALONE’ The actress and writer Natasha Rothwell (“Insecure,” “White Lotus”) created and stars in this wistful comedy about a lonely airport worker whose life changes after a near-death experience involving an armoire and crab Rangoon. (Hulu, Sept. 13)Natasha Rothwell plays a lonely airport worker in the comedy “How to Die Alone,” which premieres on Hulu in September.Lindsay Sarazin/Disney‘AGATHA ALL ALONG’ Kathryn Hahn returns to her “WandaVision” character in this Marvel spinoff series. The witch Agatha Harkness, stripped of her powers, hits the road and forms a new coven; the cast includes Joe Locke of “Heartstopper,” Sasheer Zamata, Debra Jo Rupp and Aubrey Plaza. (Disney+, Sept. 18)‘THE PENGUIN’ Colin Farrell covers himself in silicone once again to play the waddling gangster Oswald Cobblepot, a.k.a. the Penguin, a role he first essayed in Matt Reeves’s 2022 film “The Batman.” Reeves is an executive producer of this mini-series, and Lauren LeFranc (“Impulse,” “Chuck”) is writer and showrunner. (HBO, Sept. 19)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In ‘Nobody Wants This,’ Adam Brody Keeps the Faith

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      Adam Brody’s bar mitzvah was held six months late. It was barely held at all. This was in San Diego, Calif., in the early 1990s, and Brody, who spent most of his free time surfing, attended Hebrew school only under duress. He knew few other Jews.“I wanted long, straight blond hair,” he said. “All my idols were named Shane.”A decade later, after a cursory stint at community college, an impulsive move to Los Angeles, a handful of television one-offs and a brief arc on “Gilmore Girls,” Brody became the most famous Jewish (well, half Jewish) high schooler in America. (He was actually 23, which made the fandom a little tricky.) Starring as Seth Cohen on the sun-kissed teen romantic dramedy “The O.C.,” he played a curly-haired heartthrob, responsible for introducing the holiday portmanteau “Chrismukkah” into the lexicon.“Adam has that quality of it being very Adam,” said Valerie Faris, the director of “Nobody Wants This.” “But at the same time, it’s perfect for the character too.” Josh Schwartz, a creator of “The O.C.” put a lot of himself into Seth. But Brody, he said in an interview, brought charisma and a surfer cool to a character who could have come off as merely nerdy. “He’s an aspirational Jew,” Schwartz joked of Brody.The “O.C.” ended four years later. (Beachy TV can accommodate only so many car crashes and love triangles, and 20-somethings can’t play teens forever.) Brody worked steadily for the next two decades, darting between film and television. Mostly he played variations on a theme, the nice guy, although they aren’t always so nice. As he reminded me over lunch in Santa Monica, “I’ve played my fair share of rapists and murderers.”But Brody’s gift is for comedy — comedy flecked with emotional complication. He reminded viewers of this in the 2022 limited series “Fleishman Is in Trouble,” in which he plays another aspirational Jew, a likable finance guy. (This is harder than it looks.) He is now the star of “Nobody Wants This,” a Netflix romantic comedy about Noah (Brody), a Los Angeles rabbi, who falls for Joanne (Kristen Bell), an outspoken non-Jewish podcaster. It premieres on Sept. 26.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Queenpins’ Review: Suburban Scammers

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      Two cash-strapped neighbors devise a multimillion-dollar coupon swindle in this mildly entertaining comedy.“Queenpins” might have been a snappy little comedy had it lost 20 minutes and found a point beyond glorifying grand larceny. Erasing the lead character’s smug-perky narration wouldn’t have hurt, either.Set mainly in suburban Phoenix, Ariz. — with pit stops in other dehydrated locations — the movie smiles on Connie (Kristen Bell), a cash-strapped coupon cutter whose bland good cheer masks a desperate longing for a child.“You’re trying to replace a baby with coupons,” her husband (Joel McHale), a withdrawn I.R.S. agent, accurately observes before largely disappearing from the story. Connie’s true partner, though, is JoJo (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), a bubbly neighbor and vlogger looking for a break. Together, they hatch a scheme to steal coupons from a printing facility in Mexico and sell them on YouTube. What could possibly go wrong?Written and directed by the husband-and-wife team of Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly, “Queenpins,” inspired by actual events, can’t decide if its pink-collar criminals are fools or geniuses. Neither can the two men on their trail: a businesslike postal inspector (Vince Vaughn, starved for decent lines) and the movie’s true hero, Ken Miller (an excellent Paul Walter Hauser), an officious loss-prevention officer for a supermarket chain. Ken’s longing for respect makes him a ridiculous, even pathetic figure; but he has a dogged, shabby sense of honor that the film views as a joke and repeatedly undermines.Making no secret of where its sympathies lie, “Queenpins” scampers toward its ludicrous conclusion with less concern for logic than for ensuring that everyone gets what he or she wants. With the possible exception of the audience.QueenpinsRated R for iffy language and icky behavior. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. In theaters and on Paramount+. More

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      ‘Ultra City Smiths’ Review: New York Neo-Noir, With Plastic Dolls

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      The creator of “Patriot” and “Perpetual Grace Ltd.” delivers another show not quite like any other.If you’re looking for something different on television, an exotic bloom amid the endless rows of spider plants, the writer and director Steven Conrad presents an interesting case. His previous series, dark-comic pastiches of the spy thriller (“Patriot”) and the contemporary western (“Perpetual Grace Ltd.”), didn’t feel unfamiliar, both because they’re faithful to their sources and because there are plenty of other high-concept genre workouts on offer. On the other hand, Conrad is a talented and distinctive writer, and his shows have had an idiosyncratic mix of mournful humor and cool absurdism that has set them apart, and inspired a cultish devotion. More