What does a forgotten 1970s CBS sitcom have to do with one of Netflix’s most talked-about romantic comedies right now? More than you might expect — and the connection says something genuinely interesting about how American television has, and hasn’t, changed when it comes to love across religious lines.
Nobody Wants This, the Netflix series starring Adam Brody and Kristen Bell, has reignited conversations about interfaith romance on screen. But it isn’t the first time a major network took a swing at that story. Decades earlier, CBS aired Bridget Loves Bernie — a sitcom that tackled a Jewish-Catholic relationship at a time when that premise alone was enough to make audiences deeply uncomfortable. The show ran for 24 episodes before being cancelled, despite being one of the highest-rated programs on television at the time.
The parallel between these two shows — one from the early 1970s, one streaming today — offers a window into just how much the cultural conversation around interfaith relationships has shifted, and how much of it remains stubbornly the same.
The Show That Got Cancelled for Being Too Popular
Bridget Loves Bernie debuted on CBS in 1972 and told the story of a wealthy Irish-Catholic woman and a working-class Jewish man who fall in love and get married. The concept sounds relatively mild by today’s standards, but at the time it generated significant backlash — not from poor ratings, but from religious communities who felt the show normalized interfaith marriage in ways they found troubling.
Jewish organizations, in particular, raised concerns that the show sent the wrong message to younger audiences about the acceptability of marrying outside the faith. The pressure was substantial enough that CBS cancelled the series after a single season, even though it had been pulling in strong viewership numbers and was considered a genuine ratings success.
That tension — between what audiences clearly wanted to watch and what certain groups felt comfortable seeing normalized — is exactly what makes Nobody Wants This feel like such a direct, if unintentional, descendant of that earlier show.
What Nobody Wants This Gets Right That Bridget Loves Bernie Couldn’t
The Netflix series centers on Joanne, a podcast host who is decidedly not Jewish, falling for Noah, a rabbi. The interfaith dynamic isn’t background noise — it’s the central tension of the entire show. Noah’s family, his congregation, and his own sense of identity are all forces pulling against the relationship in ways the series takes seriously rather than plays purely for laughs.
Where Bridget Loves Bernie was operating in an era when simply depicting the relationship was considered provocative, Nobody Wants This has the freedom to actually explore what that relationship costs both people. The streaming format helps — there’s no network standards board, no advertiser nervousness, and no single community with enough leverage to pull the plug mid-season.
The cultural distance between 1972 and now also matters. Interfaith marriages have become significantly more common across the United States in the decades since Bridget Loves Bernie aired, which means the audience watching Nobody Wants This is far more likely to see their own lives — or the lives of people they know — reflected in the story.
Why the 24-Episode Run Still Matters
There’s something worth sitting with in the fact that Bridget Loves Bernie only got 24 episodes. That’s not a failed show — that’s a show that was working, that people were watching, and that got shut down anyway because the subject matter made powerful groups uncomfortable.
It’s a reminder that the history of television is full of stories that didn’t get told, or didn’t get to finish being told, because of pressure that had nothing to do with quality or audience interest. The fact that Nobody Wants This exists at all — that it can explore a rabbi falling for a non-Jewish woman without facing the same kind of institutional resistance — represents a genuine shift in what the medium allows.
| Show | Network / Platform | Era | Episodes | Interfaith Pairing | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bridget Loves Bernie | CBS | 1972–1973 | 24 | Irish-Catholic woman / Jewish man | Cancelled despite high ratings due to religious community pressure |
| Nobody Wants This | Netflix | 2024–present | Ongoing | Non-Jewish woman / Jewish rabbi | Renewed; culturally prominent streaming hit |
The Part of This Story Most Recaps Are Missing
When people write about Nobody Wants This, the conversation tends to focus on the chemistry between Brody and Bell, the writing, or the romantic comedy genre more broadly. What gets less attention is how rare it still is for a mainstream English-language show to put Jewish identity — specifically the tension between religious observance and romantic love — at the center of its storytelling rather than treating it as a quirky character detail.
Bridget Loves Bernie was cancelled in part because it dared to suggest that love could cross those lines. Nobody Wants This is being celebrated, at least partly, for exploring exactly how complicated crossing those lines actually is. That’s not a small distinction. It reflects a television landscape that has, slowly and unevenly, learned to treat religious and cultural identity as something worth dramatizing honestly rather than something to be smoothed over or avoided entirely.
What Comes Next for Nobody Wants This
The show has already been renewed, giving it the runway that Bridget Loves Bernie never had. Where the story goes from here — how it handles the ongoing friction between Joanne and Noah’s world, whether it deepens the religious and cultural questions it has raised — will determine whether it becomes something genuinely lasting or simply a very charming romantic comedy that happened to have an interesting premise.
Either way, the fact that it exists, and that it’s drawing audiences back to think about a show that was cancelled more than fifty years ago for being too honest, suggests the conversation it’s part of is one television still hasn’t fully finished having.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Bridget Loves Bernie?
It was a CBS sitcom that aired in 1972 and 1973, following an interfaith couple — an Irish-Catholic woman and a Jewish man — across 24 episodes before being cancelled despite strong ratings.
Why was Bridget Loves Bernie cancelled?
The show faced significant pressure from religious communities, particularly Jewish organizations, who objected to its portrayal of interfaith marriage as acceptable. CBS cancelled it after one season even though it was a ratings success.
What is Nobody Wants This about?
The Netflix series follows a non-Jewish podcast host who falls for a rabbi, with the interfaith dynamic serving as the central tension of the show’s romantic storyline.
How are Nobody Wants This and Bridget Loves Bernie connected?
Both shows explore interfaith romantic relationships as their core subject matter, making Nobody Wants This a thematic successor to the earlier sitcom, albeit one made in a very different cultural and television landscape.
Has Nobody Wants This been renewed?
Yes, the show has been renewed for additional episodes, giving it the continued run that Bridget Loves Bernie never received.
Who stars in Nobody Wants This?
The series stars Adam Brody and Kristen Bell as the central couple navigating their interfaith relationship.
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