This surprisingly earnest and old-fashioned sitcom explores a very contemporary question – is monogamy the only way?

What is it? A romcom sitcom about what happens when a happily married couple start dating a third person, together.

Why you’ll love it: You Me Her tells the story of Jack and Emma Trakarsky, a married couple pushing 40 with a nice big house, aspirational jobs and a tepid sex life. They like each other almost as much as they like eating at the street food vans in their home city of Portland, but, as Emma admits, she’s kind of relieved when they do have sex, because it means she’s off the hook for a while.

The wheels are in motion for a retro romcom with an ultra-current twist. With surprising ease, Jack (Greg Poehler, wide-eyed brother of Amy) takes the advice of his boorish older brother and hires an escort, Izzy, with the roundabout intention of making himself more attracted to his wife. He quickly confesses all to Emma (Rachel Blanchard, who played Cher in the TV version of Clueless and Nancy in Peep Show), who does the sensible thing and hires Izzy for a date herself, which ends in much bathroom snogging and a barrage of confusion for all parties.

In the very first episode of the sketch show Portlandia, the residents of the city band together to sing their imagined anthem: “the dream of the 90s is alive in Portland”. You Me Her takes that very literally. It’s so 90s that it’s practically wearing a skinny T-shirt and a choker. The characters talk about their feelings, a lot, usually while walking in a park. There are many montages, some of which involve bad dancing. There’s loads of irony. There’s even a nod to the biggest 90s romcom cliche of all at the end of the first season, though this might have worked better had Jack not continued to point out that what they were doing was a romcom cliche.

For all its attempts to explore what feels like a contemporary question – is monogamy the only way? – there’s something incredibly earnest and old-fashioned about You Me Her. There is no suggestion that it’s merely about sex and desire, as emotions and attachments form rapidly, and in fact, what it leans towards is a pretty traditional form of a non-traditional relationship. It also feels like television that could only have been conceived of pre-Trump: an architect and a teacher at a private school skipping through their sunny middle-class life inventing problems somehow seems more indulgent than it did back in October.

Nonetheless there is something charming about it. Poehler and Blanchard are just the right side of sweet, while Priscilla Faia, who plays Izzy, is just the right side of intense. The three-way chemistry is palpable. The lingering shots of Portland are not unpleasant. It sits somewhere between a sex farce and Sleepless In Seattle, which is not a combination that should be successful, but on occasion, when the jokes land as they should, it hits the spot. A second season has just begun on its US home, Audience Network, which means there’s a lot of logistical work for the throuple to do yet.

Where: Netflix

Length: 10 half-hour episodes

Stand-out episode: Episode six. After much sincerity about its romantic intentions, it finally gets silly, as the nosy neighbours and one very irritated boyfriend descend upon Jack and Emma’s house to find out what exactly is going on in there.

If you liked You Me Her, watch: Easy, Love, anything Judd Apatow has done recently.

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