We’ve got some good news and some bad news for you this afternoon. The good news is that NBC is adapting BBC Three’s Cuckoo, which starred the great Andy Samberg in his first post-Saturday Night Live endeavor, Deadline reports.

Cuckoo is the story of a middle-class family whose daughter comes back from a summer abroad married to a charming but infuriating hippie moron — a guy called Cuckoo. UK writers Robin French and Kieron Quirke, who created the BBC series, will write the adaptation, with The Simpsons veteran Tim Long on board as showrunner. French, Quirke and Long executive produce with the original series’ exec producers Ash Atalla and Dan Hine.

The bad news is that Samberg is already on Fox’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine and it’s highly unlikely he’ll play Cuckoo again. So, I guess it’s time to watch the British version.

The post NBC To Adapt ‘Cuckoo’ But Not With Andy Samberg appeared first on Jewcy.

Now that summer is, for all intents and purposes (if not yet officially), over, all our favorite TV shows are on their way back from their all-too-long summer hiatus. Schmidt will be Schmidt and a slightly more mature Rachel Berry will make her NYADA debut. Eli Gold will continue to spin everything and who knows if Dr. Cristina Yang will be back (well, IMDB does). And while we can’t wait for all that, we interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to take a look at this season’s potential Network Jews. Not the ones that have warmed their way into your heart through hours of watching and rewatching, but the ones who might have that honor if they don’t get prematurely canceled. We’re the first to admit that it’s difficult to judge a character by a four-minute promo, but we won’t let that stop us.

Partners, CBS: Perhaps the Jewiest Network Jew on the horizon is David Krumholtz’s Joe on CBS’s Partners. It doesn’t hurt that Krumholtz (who we love as Joseph Gordon Levitt’s guide in 10 Things I Hate About You, but you may know from Numb3rs) is actually Jewish and grew up in Queens. From what we can glean, Partners is about two guys (one who wants to marry Alyssa Milano when he grows up—that would be Krumholtz—and the other who wants to marry Bette Midler—that would be his stereotypically gay best friend Louis, played by Michael Urie of Ugly Betty fame) and their joint architecture firm. Just kidding! It’s about their relationship drama, or really Krumholtz’s hesitation to propose to his non-Jewish girlfriend Ali (shouldn’t Ted Mosby make a cameo at some point?)

The trailer seems to harp on this proposal (leading to such lines as “that’s what your shmekel is telling you”) and the ensuing catastrophe typical of such shows, but in the end all is right in the world and the only drama that’s left is trying to figure out how Joe and Louis’ relationship will harm Joe and Ali’s relationship (oh, did we mention she’s played by Sophia Bush?).

Jewiness: Hesitation about intermarriage? Check. Words like shmekel? Check.

Watchability: Do you really want to watch Micahel Urie talk about David Krumholtz’s shmekel? Or Sophia Bush in general? We didn’t think so.

The Mindy Project, Fox: This may be more of a supporting role, but we’re hoping that Richard Schiff, you know, that Sorkin Jew, will have a larger place in the hospital of Fox’s The Mindy Project. Granted he only has about two lines in the pilot episode (available now on Hulu). Sample: “You are eight and a half months pregnant. You’re husbands gotta keep his schvantz away from you.”

Jewiness: Even with his limited dialogue, Schiff manages to throw in a schvantz joke. Yep, that’s another Yiddish word for penis. Oh, and he’s a Jewish doctor, enough said.

Watchability: We’ll always give Mindy Kaling a chance (especially now that she’s done with The Office).

Go On, NBC: We’re going to go out on a limb here and guess that Laura Benanti’s Lauren Schneider on NBC’s Matthew Perry-starring show, Go On, is Jewish. After all, Matthew Perry is no stranger to playing a character with Jewish friends. While there are no versions of the Yiddish word for penis to help us out, we have faith that Season 1 won’t disappoint.

Perry plays a sportscaster who is dealing with the death of his wife and is forced by his boss (or so it seems from the pilot that NBC “sneak-previewed” after the Summer Olympics—which and is now available on Hulu) to attend mandatory counseling. For reasons that aren’t exactly clear, instead of paying for therapy (he appears to be relatively well-off), he decides to attend day-time sessions of group therapy at what can only be described as a community rec-center (during the same time slot there seem to be a group of sci-fi/war re-enacters). Enter Schneider, the groups not-so-put-together leader (who we imagine will play some sort of love interest will-they-or-won’t-the couple with Perry’s character) who has no formal training (aside from Weight Watchers) to guide her. Hilarity will (we hope) ensue.

Jewiness: Unclear, we’re guessing (hoping!) that Schneider is Jewish, but so far there’s no proof.

Watchability: Channeling a bit of Chandler’s sarcasm and throw in the hodge-podge friendships of Community, we’re definitely giving this show a chance.

Who’d we miss and who are you looking forward to watching? Let us know in the comments.

The post Network Jews: Fall Preview—Partners, The Mindy Project, and Go On appeared first on Jewcy.

• Concert technical issues be damned, Liza Minnelli’s still got it.

• Matthew Shaer breaks down (get it!) the history of book recycling—a fate that Jonah Lehrer’s quote-fabricating book, Imagine, will likely soon meet.

• It looks like that new H&H bagels will not actually be opening in downtown Manhattan. Quit playing games with our heart, bagel lords.

• Anthony Wiener and Huma Abedin moved into fancy new Park Avenue digs.

• Richard Roeper gives his approval of Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg’s performances in their new movie, Celeste and Jesse Forever.

• NBC’s Olympic commentators mistook Jesse Eisenberg, sitting in the stands, for Mark Zuckerberg. Now that’s what we call committing to the character.

The post Daily Jewce: Jesse Eisenberg is Not Mark Zuckerberg, Liza’s Technical Issues appeared first on Jewcy.

And as Community itself has gotten both progressively weirder and less easily classifiable, Annie, in turn, has begun to shed her Flickian skin. Season 1’s Annie was an academically focused but emotionally fragile innocent who proudly proclaimed that she was “totally comfortable being uncomfortable with [her] sexuality.” (Her only sexual encounter hadn’t exactly been worth writing home about: “I had relations with my high school boyfriend,” she told fellow Community members Shirley and Britta. “We did it to Madonna’s Erotica on the floor of his walk-in closet … He’s gay now.” Incidentally, this incident recalls one from Brie’s own past.)

Two years later, Annie hasn’t exactly learned to cut loose—but she has morphed into an infinitely more complicated character. The Annie we know today is still an ambitious, rule-abiding gunner who records all her classes to facilitate easier note taking. She’s also still more comfortable playing yenta with the members of her study group than taking charge of her own romantic destiny. But at the same time, Annie’s proven she has a wild streak that enables her to transform into, say, a badass, paintball gun-toting action heroine if need be. Season 1 Annie would have confessed immediately if she had broken her roommate’s priceless Dark Knight DVD; Season 3 Annie elects instead to stage an elaborate fake robbery, claiming that a mysterious stranger nabbed the DVD in question.

And though Annie still retains an aura of erotic inexperience, she’s somehow become Community’s most overtly sexualized character as well. See, for example, “Teach Me How to Understand Christmas,” an absurd and dirty number Annie performs in Season 3’s musical holiday episode. The thin premise is that Annie doesn’t get how to celebrate the season because she’s a Member of the Tribe. Though the song is obviously meant as a send-up of bawdy carols like “Santa Baby,” parodic suggestiveness is still suggestiveness; Annie performs the tune in a barely-there Santa costume that puts the “ho” in “ho ho ho.” By its conclusion, she’s straddling arrogant ex-lawyer Jeff and cooing, “Boopie doopie doop boop, sex!” (That’s literally the last line in “Teach Me.”)

Annie’s evolution is likely the result of the show’s scripts mining the discrepancies between Brie herself—the sexually liberated, worldly actress in her late 20s—and the character she plays. But there’s also an in-universe explanation for her development. It all comes back to Annie’s own fractured childhood: While she identifies as Jewish throughout Community’s run, in Season 2 she reveals that her dad—like Brie’s own—is actually a Christian. Before her parents got divorced, she explains, the holidays at her house were always “a minefield of overlapping rituals.” Annie reacted to the chaos of her broken home by prizing order above all other virtues—a choice that eventually led to an Adderall addiction, which is what landed her in community college in the first place.

But prolonged exposure to the nuttiness exuded by the rest of Community’s cast has thwarted Annie’s best efforts to stay disciplined. Now, with every episode that passes, she’s becoming more like them: unhinged and unpredictable. And as Annie moves away from personifying the archetypal brittle overachiever, she just gets more interesting. This shift means that as the show moves forward—hopefully all the way to a fourth season—we may be less likely to, say, see Annie bristle when her friends call her a Jew rather than Jewish (“Say the whole word!” she urges in Season 1’s “Comparative Religion”). Ultimately, though, it’s a positive sign of growth—even if in this case, growing up means growing progressively more unglued.

Last week on Network Jews: Schmidt from New Girl

Hillary Busis writes for EW.com and tweets here

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Two weeks in, it appears that along with the departure of Steve Carell, the most exciting narrative of the NBC Thursday Spring season will be the epic battle each week between Parks & Recreation and Community for funniest show on television. Last night, P&R won by showing how hilarious it is to have Ron Swanson giddy as a school child, Andy run into a car, and many of the rest of the cast flu-ridden (leading Leslie to ask the night’s most resonate question, “Was I wearing a tiara when I came in here? Because if you happen upon it, will you have Lady Pennyface retrieve it and send it post hence?”).

Last night, the story might be that Perfect Couples was better than 30 Rock.  It feels as crazy to write as it probably does to read, but Perfect Couples was simply a more enjoyable 30 minutes of situationally comedic television.  We have undoubtedly loved 30 Rock for all of its six season but six seasons is still a long time and sometimes you have an episode that plainly is meh.

After two episodes, Perfect Couples is not as easily dismissed as it first appeared.  The premise – focusing each episode on a theme of marriage and having it play out differently over three different types of couples – has proven fertile for both necessary conflict and comedy.  In this way it is most reminiscent of Modern Family in that instead of avoiding clichés it embraces them in earnest and tries to put its own spin on it.  Perfect Couples stands as the one in show in this lineup that’s not trying to reinvent the wheel.

That is not to say Perfect Couples lacks ambition; it has shown itself to be packed with some bold flourishes.  With its quick cuts and frenzied score, it is easily the most frantically paced show of the night, which has successfully heightened the show’s farcical underpinning.  What has been really fun is that the stories are not told completely linearly; they use 30 Rockian cutaways not for absurdist diversions but to offer glimpses at where these couples started out and foreshadow future plot developments (like a not at all depressing Blue Valentine).  In last night’s episode, for example, this device was used to great effect to tell the surprising and ridiculous story of how Rex proposed to Leigh.

Not that the show is without kinks. Fundamentally, the writing and acting is grotesquely uneven.  There are three couples – the normal one, the crazy one (as Vance put it, “I’m big, she drinks from a jar, I really think this can work”), and the one that for some reason features Olivia Munn – yet they all do not contribute equally to the laugh creation.  The crazy one brings a lion’s share of the funny, the normal one operates as the necessary straight men, and the last one mostly exists as graveyard of failed punch lines.  As is often the case with young shows, the scripts were likely written before the cast was set, so one would hope that with time the characters will really start reflecting the actor’s voices.  If it gets enough episodes for this happen, Perfect Couples will grow into a decidedly good TV show.

Will it ever be one of the greats?  Probably not, but if <s>Kabletown’s</s> Comcast’s NBC decides to stick with this three-hour comedy racket, it might come to offer a nice relief from the high-wire cleverness of its line-up mates.  Meaning that Perfect Couples might be one of the best shows of any given night, but likely not operate at Parks and Recreation and Community’s current level.

So as the night’s winner, here is a clip from last nights Parks & Recreation

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