A light romantic comedy is coming like When Harry Met Sally for involved millennials – The Irish Times

Do you hate podcasts? You will after bingeing Nobody Wants This, a passable romantic comedy on Netflix (the home of passable romantic comedies) struck by its central thesis: that chatting into an expensive microphone with a friend, then sharing your chatter with the Internet, is a calling higher. Highest appeal, going through this otherwise light-hearted 10-parter that lands as When Harry Met Sally for the millennials involved.

Kristen Bell (Frozen, The Good Place) and Adam Brody (The OC) are Joanne and Noah, the “will they/won’t they” couple whose ups and downs in their relationship are tracked with expert quirkiness. He’s a cool rabbi – a bit like Andrew Scott’s “burning priest” in Fleabag, without the Irish accent and with a veneer of L.A. main character syndrome. Bell’s character, meanwhile, hosts a relationship podcast with his sister (Succession’s Justine Lupe, exhausted with a peripheral role) and Nobody Wants This is important to us to know that their show – with its regular updates on romantic woes by Joanne – is a gigantic contribution to the well-being of humanity. Or, as Noah tells Joanne with a straight face: “What you do matters.”

But is this really the case? The other problem that hampers a mostly quick and watchable adventure is that the leads have negligible chemistry. Showrunner (and former podcaster) Erin Foster loads the script with what once would have been called repartee, and from the moment Joanne shows up at a party Noah is invited to, they exchange archaic dialogue like old pros .

But the exchanges are strictly superficial, and beyond the jokes, we never believe that they have much in common. The show also seems to think Noah is heroic for abandoning his last girlfriend due to his supposed neediness. She finds the engagement ring that he had kept under lock and key until the perfect time to pop the question, and his eagerness to pursue things and get married is seen as a huge character flaw.

Bell’s last big streaming hit, The Good Place, was a fun adventure set in the afterlife and owed much to his slightly worn charm and knack for zany comic relief. She’s just as likable in Nobody Wants This but struggles to get anywhere with Brody, a black hole of anti-charm. With his hipster beard and laconic view of religion, it’s hard to take him seriously as a rabbi. But it’s even harder to believe in Noah and Joanne as a star-crossed couple, and that’s a huge flaw for a romantic comedy full of piquant gags but devoid of heart.