New Girl

Channel: Ten
Day & time: Sunday, 8.00 p.m.*
*As at January 2012

After a few years on the big screen, with the occasional television appearance, the hipster goddess Zooey Deschanel now has her very own TV series with the good-natured and totally entertaining New Girl.

This spin on the roommate comedy (think Friends) is a kind of reverse Big Bang Theory. In BBT, the males (Sheldon, Leonard etc) are nerds but the woman (Penny) is coool. Here, the guys who come to share an outrageously large apartment with Deschanel's character are cool (well, kind of), and she's the dork.

The series opens with Jess (Deschanel) discovering - in a hilarious but nonetheless painful way - that her boyfriend Spencer (Ian Wolterstorff) is cheating on her. Since she's been living at his apartment, she needs a new place. Answering an ad, she's taken in by three guys who live in a trendy Los Angeles loft. There's Schmidt (Max Greenfield), a smooth womaniser; Nick (Jake M. Johnson) a bartender with a chip on his shoulder; and Coach (Damon Wayans Jr).

It's possibly important to pause at this point and note that Damon Wayans Jr, and his character Coach, only appear in the pilot episode. From episode 2, he's replaced by Winston (Lamorne Morris). It seems Winston lived with Nick and Schmidt previously, but has been playing pro basketball in Latvia. He's now returned home and Coach has obligingly vacated his room.

Anyway, the whole point is that Jess is a bit of a dweeb. She likes Dirty Dancing and Lord of the Rings, and has a penchant for making up her own theme songs - about herself. While this is something of a turn-off for the guys, the deal for Jess to move in is sealed when she reveals that she's best friends with Cece (Hannah Simone), a supermodel.

So we once more have a sit-com based around mismatched personalities thrown together in close quarters by circumstances. Pretty boring, right? Well, in this case, actually no. New Girl sparkles for two reasons - some very smart scripts from creator and screenwriter Elizabeth Meriwether; and the winning performance of Ms Zooey in the lead role.

The series, while very funny, never belittles the characters. Even a more peripheral character like Cece, who it would be easy to make into a caricature, is nicely developed. You can tell that Meriwether cares about her characters and wants the audience to care about them too. While inevitably some episodes are stronger than others, you never come away from an episode of New Girl feeling like you've been cheated.

As for Deschanel, she lights up the screen. With her bright and breezy screen persona given full range here, she lifts the series above the run-of-the-mill.

She's ably assisted by her male co-stars though. Max Greenfield (Ugly Betty) provides many of the show's best laughs as the vain, preening Schmidt. There's a nice twist in that his womanising character actually works for a woman and is browbeaten at work. Jake M. Johnson (Allen Gregory) has the least funny character in the prickly Nick, but plays him to a tee, finding the light and shade in him. Of course, in a comedy like this, you need someone who's not hilarious all the time in order to provide context to the humour. Lamorne Morris (The Guild) is great as Winston and gets plenty of opportunity to express himself.

The show was one of the most-watched new series in the US fall season, and is attracting actors like Justin Long and Lake Bell into cameo roles.

New Girl is an easy show to like. Its charm and offbeat style should make this a success here for Ten. My one concern is that maybe it's a bit too smart for its own good - and we all know what happens with smart TV shows in this country. Let's hope this refreshing and often hilarious show sticks around for a long time to come.

David Edwards