First, we all lost it for Fleabag’s “hot priest”. Now, our collective crush is “hot rabbi” from Nobody Wants This. The men of God are the sideshow, though. What’s really hot, according to the No. 1 Netflix romcom in Australia everyone is currently bingeing, is restraint.

In Nobody Wants This, Kristen Bell plays the unlucky-in-love Joanne whose dating dramas provide endless material for her sex-positive podcast (“always be the hot one” is her tip for surviving threesomes). Sparks fly between her and hot rabbi Noah, played by The O.C.‘s Adam Brody. Noah is fresh out of a relationship, but Joanne isn’t a believer. Inconveniently, as with Fleabag’s hot priest, where Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s protagonist fell deeply in love with a celibate man of the cloth, hot rabbi is all in on the God thing. Nevertheless, opposites attract.

The “hot priest” from the TV show Fleabag, played by Andrew Scott, and the “hot rabbi” from Nobody Wants This, played by Adam Brody. Credit: Illustration by Monique Westermann

Makes sense, really. Modern love guru and psychotherapist Esther Perel says eros is all about the forbidden, the unknown, the new, and dangerous. Sure, Perel was talking about how monogamous marriage – aka “mating in captivity” – meant death for sexual desire. But if it’s a human thing to want what we can’t have, then even God-botherers might........

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