We rate Jesse Peretz’s feel for character comedy and his attention to performers. Nobody Wants This is an agreeable way into his work, though its writing gives the religious differences between its leads too little weight.
Fi1m perspective
In Nobody Wants This (2024), Kristen Bell and Adam Brody make the attraction between their characters convincing. We enjoyed their company because the romance feels believable, even when the obstacles need better writing. Jesse Peretz’s work on the series fits his established strength in character comedy and his intimate approach to performance scenes. He is worth following for those qualities, with some care over how much of a series’ success we attribute to one director.
The early features, including First Love, Last Rites (1997) and The Ex (2006), met with mixed reviews. Our Idiot Brother (2011) was the breakthrough that established his reputation for character comedy. His earlier work in music videos informs the technical assurance and intimacy of his approach to performers. Those are useful skills for comedy that depends on our taking an interest in people, particularly when the script gives the actors more to do than deliver jokes.
From the 2010s, television became his main occupation, with sustained collaborations rather than the occasional episode. He directed 18 episodes of Lena Dunham’s Girls (2012) and also served as a producer. On GLOW (2017), he directed the pilot and further episodes, continuing his association with female-led storytelling. Juliet, Naked (2018), an adaptation drawing on his music-industry background, continued the feature work alongside television. The length of his involvement in Girls makes that collaboration particularly important when considering his work.
Nobody Wants This also makes clear what an appealing cast cannot fix. The supporting players are funny, but the writing makes too little of the religious differences between the leads. We want those difficulties explored more fully; the romance would be stronger if the script gave the couple’s differences as much attention as their attraction. That is a meaningful limitation, though Bell and Brody keep the series enjoyable. Choose it for an evening of romantic comedy, with modest expectations of how thoroughly it will examine what keeps the pair apart.
Biography
Jesse Peretz is an American film and television director and former musician. Born on 19 May 1968 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he was a founding member and bassist of the rock band The Lemonheads, formed in 1986 while he was at Harvard University. He left the band before its major success but continued as its photographer and later directed music videos for the group and others, including the Foo Fighters' "Learn to Fly", for which he won a Grammy Award.
Peretz's feature films as director include First Love, Last Rites (1997), The Château (2001), The Ex (2006), Our Idiot Brother (2011) and Juliet, Naked (2018). In television he has directed episodes of series including Girls, GLOW, The Summer I Turned Pretty, City on Fire and Nobody Wants This (2024–). He has also worked as a producer on several shows.
