Peacock Turns the Rom-Com Into a Game of Death in the Charming “Laid” | TV/Streaming

The French call the orgasm la petite mort, but for Stephanie Hsu’s frenzied, thirtysomething serial dater Ruby in Peacock’s latest series “Laid,” the deaths around her are far from little. She’s the typical rom-com protagonist, or at least she’d like to think so: She’s obsessed with them, right down to coveting Billy Crystal’s abs in “When Harry Met Sally…” She’s chronically single, unlucky in love, and never seems to be able to find the right guy. But that flightiness comes back to haunt her when, out of nowhere, she starts learning that her exes are dying mysterious, violent deaths one by one… in the order she slept with them.

It’s a premise that sits somewhere between “Sex and the City” and, I guess, “It Follows,” but Nanatchka Khan and Sally Bradford McKenna’s revamp of the Australian series of the same name have spun it into a wry, effervescent series that’s laser-focused on the flightiness of modern millennial dating life. Like so many of us, Ruby is preternaturally insecure, cripplingly anxious, and ever so fixated on finding “the one” that the media we grew up on told us to have. But when her exes start dropping like flies, she’s left to wonder the age-old question: “Is it me?”

Unfortunately for her and those around her, this carousel ride through her romantic foibles comes with a death sentence for those in her proximity, and the rate at which her old flames crash out starts to creep up apace. All she has to work with is her (metaphorical) little black book and the unceasing aid of her best friend, AJ (Zosia Mamet), a frazzled true-crime obsessive who quickly whips up a conspiracy wall of her sexual Rolodex, red yarn and all.

If “Laid”‘s premise sounds a little tough to stretch out into an eight-episode series, you’d be partially right; after the initial shock and mystery of what’s happening to Ruby’s stable of men (and occasional women) wears off, the show falls into some pretty predictable rhythms. The back half is far weaker than the front, as Khan and McKenna struggle to throw in new wrinkles to complicate whatever curse she’s dealing with (from sexual loopholes to “Cyrano sex” that allows Ruby to loophole her way into sleeping with folks she doesn’t want to kill). The central mystery isn’t that enticing once it’s a bit more fully unraveled, and a last-minute tease for a second season doesn’t exactly grab you.

That said, what does win you over are the performances, especially from Hsu and Mamet. Hsu, fresh off her Oscar nom for “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” sketches in Ruby’s messier edges without tilting her fully into unlikability. Sure, she’s a bit Bridget Jones in her flibbertygibbitude, all goofy voices and corny accents, but Hsu allows those quirks to act in service of a grander insecurity that fuels her on-again, off-off-off-again romantic pursuits. Even her budding romance with a client named Isaac (Tommy Martinez) opens up new flavors of insecurity and possessiveness, as she not only works to steal him from her fiancee, but stresses about whether winning him over would actually kill her. It’s smart, endearing work, and she keeps “Laid” afloat in its boggiest minutes.

But Mamet’s AJ levels out Ruby’s narcissism in much-needed ways, the pair’s rapid-fire banter serving up some of the series’ better jokes. AJ’s unnatural glee at being given such an enticing crime to solve (she’s the kind of girl who idolizes Amanda Knox and bandies about wordplay about clunky Ryan Murphy series titles) is a balm and keeps things from getting too heavy, even as Ruby’s metaphorical body count becomes quite literal. But more importantly, she offers a clear-eyed view of Ruby’s deep personal flaws, the one that has made Death’s kill list so long—as all besties must.

All in all, “Laid” is lightweight almost to a fault; the life-or-death stakes of Ruby’s inadvertent sexual killing spree don’t quite land in a show with the same kind of lightness as “Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23” (which Khan and McKenna collaborated on before this). This goes double when the show actually tries to land on some answers for Ruby’s predicament, when the more interesting angle is what caused Ruby to have such a long kill list in the first place. As a reflection on the ways our baggage keeps us from truly building new relationships, “Laid” is far more interesting. Here’s hoping season two leans on that (and its understated, deadpan laughs) more than what’s making Ruby such a literally toxic ex.

All episodes screened for review. “Laid” streams in its entirety December 19th on Peacock.