Entertainment

This New TV Series Sounds Like ALL Your Fave Rom-Com Movies Rolled Into One Show

by Kristie Rohwedder

Ready your heart for a healthy helping of romance, comedy, and baked goods, because an adaptation of Israeli romantic comedy series The Baker and the Beauty could be heading to a small screen near you. As outlets including Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and Deadline reported on Thursday, ABC has given put pilot commitment to the show. And whew, this series will be one rom-com fans won't want to miss.

While the title of the one-hour scripted show may ring a Belle, do not let it LeFou-ool you. This is not another Beauty and the Beast remake. So do not expect to see any cursed princes, talking home furnishings, or heroic beauticians in this program. Rather, The Baker and the Beauty is an American adaptation of the hit Israeli show about a baker and a celebrity who fall for each other. She is the wildly famous daughter of a real estate mogul; he is the son of Cuban immigrants and lives with his parents and works at the family bakery. After a meet cute at a restaurant, the Beauty and the Baker find themselves at a center of a love story that neither saw coming.

It sounds like the American adaptation of The Baker and the Beauty has quite a bit working in its favor. For starters, the source material is a very big deal. According to Deadline, Israel’s The Baker and the Beauty is one of the country’s highest-rated scripted series of all time. Furthermore, Dean Georgaris (The Meg, The Manchurian Candidate, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life) is set to write and executive produce, and David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada, Sex and the City, Marley & Me), will direct and executive produce. Oh, and! It is a rom-com. And rom-coms rule.

The Baker and the Beauty is not just any rom-com, but a rom-com that happens to be part of the “celebrity falls for a non-celebrity” category of the rom-com genre. It is a essential and beloved and fanciful rom-com category. Movies like Notting Hill, Camp Rock, Music and Lyrics, Maid in Manhattan, A Christmas Prince, and Crazy Rich Asians all explore the burning question that is “What happens when an extremely famous person and an extremely not-famous person wind up romantically entwined?” If there’s one thing that can be gleaned from all of those great films, it is the A-list is no match for true love.

Unlike a croissant that’s been left out on a counter for a week, this rom-com subcategory never feels stale. Come on, who among us hasn’t wondered what it would be like to stumble on a crack in a sidewalk, gets helped up by a super famous person whose name rhymes with “Shmarry Shmiles,” and then ends up dating the sweet creature behind the song “Sweet Creature”?

Anyway, this sounds like a fun show, and what do you know? You can stream the first two seasons of the original The Baker and the Beauty on Amazon Prime right now.