Nobody Wants This review: Another nail in the coffin of the rom com genre ★★

This season follows Noah’s impudent attempt to convince his girlfriend – of, what, a few months? - to commit to a full Jewish conversion. Joanne, understandably hesitant to convert just to appease her boyfriend and his intrusive mother (whose antagonism has taken somewhat of a back seat since season one), tries to decide what she really wants, except she only really wants to be with Noah, so the cycle infuriatingly continues. As I wrote in my notes whilst watching this season: “They keep having these f***ing break-up arguments only to come running back to each other like ‘it's you, it’s always been you!'”

There are a few half-hearted attempts to work around their conversion issue – for example, when Noah dips a toe into a congregation where rabbis in interfaith relationships are welcomed. But the synagogue’s exaggeratedly hippie-ish, lackadaisical approach to religious ritual feels like a mockery of the Progressive denomination, a somewhat cumbersome way to convey that in leaving his vague strand of conservative Judaism (it feels like the equivalent of Masorti in the UK, but who can really tell) for Joanne, Noah would effectively be leaving the faith he knows and loves.

But for a conservative rabbi, Noah’s sermons are awfully loose, often sounding more like a blurb on the back of a self-help book than a lesson gleaned from Jewish text (“If you don’t risk, you might not experience life” is one his many radical takes). And yet every time Jewish Tony Robbins steps up to a bimah to share these hard-won platitudes, a twinkling of hopeful, inspiring music starts to play, and Joanne’s eyes go misty with rapture.

I mean, seriously. I’m not saying the hot rabbi should go elbow-deep into parshat, but if we’re to believe he’s as religious as the plot of this show insists, a smidgen of actual Judaism wouldn’t go amiss.

Although Joanne and Noah remain two-dimensional, the waggish supporting characters get more time to develop into real people this season, which is a welcome surprise. Morgan (Justine Lupe) is still catty and vain in that blonde LA way, but this season she begins to grapple with the revelation that she is - shock – a shallow person, and might also be susceptible to cult-like persuasion given that her new boyfriend is also her therapist. Morgan's affair with “Dr Andy” is just the right kind of deliciously disturbing subplot to offset the saccharine love fest at the show’s centre.

Meanwhile Esther (Jackie Tohn) transforms from the shiksa-hating crone of season one into an empathetic woman approaching mid-life with more questions than answers. Her budding fear that she isn’t “fun” anymore, which her goofy husband Sasha (Timothy Simons) tries to understand across a growing marital divide, progresses into the most convincing and watchable storyline of the series.

Many of season two’s best moments are also thanks to random guest appearances; Seth Rogen makes a rogue cameo as the overly Progressive rabbi of Congregation Ahava; Alex Karpovsky of Girls briefly enters the scene as the gregarious Big Noah; and Leighton Meester of Gossip Girl – also Brody’s real-life wife – guest stars as an obnoxious former friend of Joanne now requiring Rabbi Noah’s services.

But the love story at the core of Nobody Wants This is repetitive and boring, and it makes poor use of Bell and Brody’s talent as actors. It’s a shame that the show’s most compelling scenes – of which there are not quite enough – don’t even include them. But hey, it’s a romcom. What else did you expect?

Nobody Wants This is now streaming on Netflix