Creator: Elizabeth Meriwether
Starring: Zooey Deschanel, Jake Johnson, Max Greenfield, Lamorne Morris and Hannah Simone
Running Time: 545 Mins
Certificate: 15
Fox’s New Girl has, unsurprisingly, been incredibly successful all over the world and I think it’s safe to say that a huge portion of that success is due to the shows wonderful leading lady Zooey Deschanel. Deschanel has a remarkable exuberance and energy that flows throughout her performance in almost every project she is part of from ELF to 500 DAYS OF SUMMER and even managed to improve M. Night Shyamalan’s atrocious THE HAPPENING. This is certainly not lacking in New Girl as Deschanel’s character Jess is as bubbly and quirky as ever. She also conveys an innocence to the audience that is finely balanced with an audacious personality that straddles the line between kind and confident perfectly. Either way it’s very hard not to fall head over heels in love with New Girl‘s central protagonist as Jess is everything you could want in a television series and more than enough to keep you firmly engaged throughout.
The three male leads Nick, Schmidt and Winston played by Jake Johnson, Max Greenfield and Lamorne Morris play a strange reversed role as the would-be-females of the show. The three of them work extremely well as a group and clearly have fun bouncing off one another which is shown through their on screen chemistry that is of course essential to every situation-comedy (Chandler, Joey and Ross from Friends spring to mind). In an odd change of dynamics, the male group are portrayed as highly metro-sexual and feminine at times giving off a fresh 21st century interpretation of the typical situation comedy formula. This works well and feels appropriate given that Jess is outnumbered in terms of gender balance. Otherwise the show would risk becoming incredibly predictable in simply making the audience guess which male character was going to end up with Jess each week.
That being said, the season does build up to a budding relationship between Nick and Jess that culminates near the climax of the season’s twenty five episode run. This seems natural, and in a way i’m grateful that the writers have waited this long to officially bring the two characters together which i’m sure is a sentiment shared by a great deal of the audience. New Girl is very refreshing compared to many other american situation comedies of the same ilk that are currently on the air. The show focuses firmly on its central characters and fails to lose sight of the story it’s telling about these characters that we have quickly grown affectionate for. Also, New Girl doesn’t fall into the trap many shows are currently stuck in of forcing the ‘situation’ into the comedy to the extent that the episode becomes tiresome and predictable. One particular highlight of the brilliant writing behind New Girl takes place in the episode ‘Virgins’ which not only displays great character development and story progression, but also gives us more of an insight into the characters’ history in a hilarious manner.
The season has some great guest stars including Jamie Lee Curtis (HALLOWEEN), Taylor Swift and my personal favourite, Raymond J. Barry as the ‘Nick from the future’ in one of the seasons funniest episodes. Admittedly New Girl wont be for everyone, but it is very easy to get into and will definitely have you addicted within two episodes. The show has an amazing cast that will intrigue based on their chemistry alone and Deschanel is easily one of the most watchable leading actresses on television. The writers have effectively managed to craft a charming situation comedy that makes you fall in love with its characters whilst also making you fall on your side with laughter.
New Girl Season 2 is released on DVD and Blu-ray 25th November.
