'Love': TV Review

Suzanne Hanover/Netflix

Aims to make you cringe more than swoon. TWITTER

Gillian Jacobs shines in Netflix's new anti-romantic comedy from Judd Apatow.

Love, the song states, is like oxygen, but Netflix's new comedy series Love is made of less essential stuff.

Created by Judd Apatow, Paul Rust and Lesley Arfin and ordered up-front for two seasons, Loveis an anti-romantic comedy, the story of two people fooled by Hollywood into believing in meet-cutes, grand gestures and the fulfilling simplicity of true love, only to realize that not everybody gets, or necessarily deserves, a storybook courtship. It's a fairly insular story of maladroit young folks with Hollywood dreams spewing pop-culture knowledge and seeking companionship in the most awkward ways imaginable against an East Los Angeles backdrop.

Love is You're the Worst in the style of Togetherness with an Apotovian tendency toward excess abetted by Netflix's tendency toward letting creatives do whatever they want without limitations. It's a variation on a common theme, but it's also squirmingly effective, fitfully funny and carried by a great, uncompromising performance from Gillian Jacobs.