Nobody Wants This review – prepare to fall in love again … with a different couple

Just as you and your true love can’t have a second first date or another first kiss, romantic comedies can never go back. Nothing replaces the giddy spell of the movie’s opening act or the TV show’s debut season. Sure, there can be some joy and fulfilment in a fictional relationship settling down, but really we want the crackle of chemistry, the thrill of a connection that’s brand new.

Nobody Wants This is now in its third season, so it has had to leave behind the days when it was powered entirely by the phenomenal screen sparkle between Adam Brody as Noah, the rabbi who can balance devotion to his faith with the mischievous instincts of a regular thirtysomething guy; and Kristen Bell as Joanne, the atheist co-host of a frank sex-and-relationships podcast who is not as cynical or shallow as people think, or as she pretends to be.

Season one flew past in a whirl of meet-cute, kiss-cute, date-cute and continue-their-romance-despite-supposedly-unresolvable-cultural-divide-cute. While Brody and Bell traded pinging screwball one-liners as fluently as any screen couple ever have, the question of whether Noah’s place within his synagogue and his family could ever be compatible with his love for a woman outside the community gave the story weight. If he and Joanne were destined not to be together, it would be for reasons more substantial than the usual romcom misunderstandings.

The second season leaned into what had become an unusually deep and nuanced portrayal of what it means to be a Jewish American in the 21st century, with the ongoing tension around whether Joanne would convert to Judaism enabling Nobody Wants This to repeat the trick of them splitting up during the final episode, then reconciling in a last scene where one or both of them sprints through the rain to say they made a mistake. It certainly can’t get away with that a third time.

So we rejoin Noah and Joanne as they move in together, opening with a gorgeous montage of them exclaiming “We live together!” in mundane domestic situations that have acquired new magic. The relationship comedy sinks into a comfortable rhythm, as Noah is destabilised by Joanne leaving the fridge door open and turning the dishwasher into a treacherous hellscape of upturned knife blades, while she chafes against his desire to take her for a dawn stroll, instead of respecting the ancient, sacred morning ritual of drinking coffee and checking celebrity gossip online.

The stakes are lower and the old fizz has somewhat fizzled: the next step for a couple is usually marriage, which does bring its own difficult sensitivities, but nothing to compare to what Noah and Joanne have already overcome. One or two episodes in the middle of season three don’t really contain a significant event, and the new milieu Joanne is pitched into, as she attends classes at temple to educate non-Jews who are about to marry into the faith, is funny without bringing much edge.

However, Nobody Wants This in safe mode still delights. The ensemble around the central couple stop it being a problem if nothing much is going on with them: we can just hang out with their parents, whose cartoon eccentricity still has plenty of comic juice in it, and particularly their siblings.

If Brody and Bell are a classic romcom couple, Timothy Simons and Justine Lupe are arguably even better as Sasha (Noah’s brother) and Morgan (Joanne’s sister), – whose radically different personalities highlight the gap the central relationship has to overcome, but who share outsider status, which gives them something in common, which draws them together …

Simons and Lupe have long been the show’s real stars as gangling manchild Sasha and self-absorbed fashionista Morgan, each ill-equipped for the adult world in their own way. Up to now Morgan has been a spectre haunting the jagged marriage of Sasha and Esther (Jackie Tohn), a couple who disagree fundamentally on how seriously to take life. Morgan’s dedication to consequence-free fun is a temptation Sasha cannot resist, while his refusal to judge her life choices and his total lack of preening self-regard, in contrast to the men Morgan normally picks, makes him a safe place for her to run towards.

Season three finally sees Sasha and Esther split, which leaves more time for his tender bond with Morgan to become a proper will-they-won’t-they. Suddenly our heads are spinning and our hearts have resumed their fluttering. It may have put down roots, but Nobody Wants This knows how to make us fall in love with it all over again.