Been there, loved that

STREAM OF STORIES

- RAJA SEN

Philip Roth would like his font back.

When feelgood romance Nobody Wants This first showed up on Netflix last year, it felt refreshing, even bracing, to see a love story on television where a woman fell for a guy who wasn’t toxic. This was no criminal or a conman but a man of the cloth, a rabbi—a milquetoast variant of the “hot priest” from Fleabag. The gentile heroine was therefore introduced to the ways of the Jews, romanticised at every step, but, most critically, the show created by Erin Foster was written smartly and sharply with enough quips and wit to justify the Caslon-style font used in tribute by the show’s titles, a font famously used on the book jackets of the iconically Jewish maestro Philip Roth.

The second season of the series, which dropped on Netflix last week, is feeble enough to relinquish its right to salute the master. The show still features great characters and wonderful actors—in particular Morgan (played by Justine Lupe) and Esther (played by Jackie Tohn)—but the main course now feels like a reheated romcom casserole. The delicious first season felt like “romantic pornography”, I had written last year, about this show with dreamy postdate conversations, easily cleared misunderstandings and wall-to-wall wish-fulfilment. However this time the protagonists are asked to retread cliché after cliché as they try to stretch out relationshippy sap. Kristen Bell’s Joanna and Adam Brody's Noah both deserve better.