5 reasons you need to start watching 'The Mindy Project'

The Mindy Project is probably a show that you’ve heard of but never seen.

If you’re here in the UK you can’t be blamed for not being familiar with it. Like some other cult and critically-acclaimed US comedies of late, it’s had a surprising lack of exposure over here.

So we’ve not had the fun of seeing Mindy Lahiri, the New York OB/GYN who’s spawned a thousand excellent Gifs. Seriously, Google them. It’s insane. Insanely good.

But good news! Now the first season and second season are arriving on DVD, and if you’re wondering whether you should expose your laughing-chops to it, here are five reasons why you definitely should…

Hey, don’t worry, Mindy’s not annoying!

This might seem an odd thing to start out with, but bear with me. Before even seeing it, some people were put off The Mindy Project because they thought Mindy Kaling’s character, Mindy Lahiri, would be as annoying as her US Office character, Kelly Kapoor.

Great news, she’s not! Mindy Lahiri is funny, flawed, and confident enough to flirt with her own reflection. It feels like cliché pandering to say she’s a ‘strong female character’, but thanks to Kaling’s writing and performance (she writes, stars and produces) she is. You’ll quickly want to spend more time with her.

The whole ‘trying to find love and have it all in the big city’ is a well-worn concept, but Mindy is so likeable – and never one to take herself too seriously – that here it feels refreshed and relatable.

And there’s a great ensemble cast

The thing about the fellow staff at the OB/GYN clinic is that Mindy feels like she’s actually friends with them. They’re not ciphers or caricatures or tropes, but an ensemble cast who play off each other terrifically well and demonstrate what a warm, sweet show The Mindy Project is at its heart.

And there’s someone for everybody, from the hilarious one-liners of Morgan Tookers (Ike Barinholtz), to the hilarious and incredibly hot Danny Castellano (Chris Messina).

Plus guest stars aplenty!

The Mindy Project seems to have got a bulk discount on famous folk, given how many of them pop up every episode.

Across the show’s run Kaling has recruited fellow US Office alumnus Ed Helms, BJ Novak and Ellie Kemper to appear, but there are also other big favourites from comedy and drama, including (but not limited to) Alan Dale, Seth Rogen, Richard Schiff, Laura Dern, Yeardley Smith, and Stephen Colbert.

Also James Franco appears! Basically, if you get through an episode without seeing a famous guest star in a great role, you’re probably accidentally watching an entirely different show. Switch over now!

It’s smart

It’s smart enough to know that it doesn’t need a dreaded laugh track to tell you where the funny bits are meant to be (and we kind of take it for granted these days that a sitcom has the confidence to do that). It’s smart enough to let its characters develop organically rather than push them into the kind of artificial situations that sitcoms can force on their characters.

It’s smart enough not to treat love or attraction as a binary on/off state, and to recognise that dating is all about pathos and bathos.

And it’s also smart enough to have a will they/won’t they romance between Mindy and her insouciantly sexy co-worker Danny (Chris Messina) that’s funny, sexy, and doesn’t drag on so long that you want to claw your TV to bits. You’ve probably got this by now, but it’s smart, okay?

It hasn’t had the UK exposure it deserves…

And yet it feels like it was just released. The Mindy Project first aired in 2012 and came to the UK not long after, where it was briefly stranded on E4, wedged in between another repeat of The Big Bang Theory, and another repeat of How I Met Your Mother. But watching it now it still feels like a show that has just popped out (a hallmark of all good comedies).

If you’ve just finished bingeing on Season 2 of Netflix’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt or have finally caught up with Master of None and need a new comedy that will make you feel equally happy and satisfied, The Mindy Project may just be what you’re looking for.

It has a dab of the craziness of Kimmy, a splash of the urban angst of Master of None, but it’s very much its own creature. A hilarious, glamorous, loveable creature.