By MARK KENNEDY, AP Entertainment Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — He’s British. She’s American. He’s a wide-eyed optimist. She’s world-weary. He loves Christmas songs. She loathes them. Naturally, they’re perfect for each other.
That classic opposites-attract setup is the basis for the new Broadway musical “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York).” It’s one of a clutch of popular new romantic comedies warming hearts this winter across various media.
There’s the HBO Max hockey show and word-of-mouth sensation “Heated Rivalry” and the Netflix agnostic-falls-for-a-rabbi series “Nobody Wants This,” while the see-you-next-year movie “People We Meet on Vacation” has become a huge Netflix hit.
There’s also “My Oxford Year,” the upcoming “Reminders of Him” and the dependable “Bridgerton,” now in Season 4. “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)” lands on Broadway beside the Tony-winning android rom-com “Maybe Happy Ending.”
“They’re all the same story, really,” says Kit Buchan, who with Jim Barne wrote the “Two Strangers” musical. “How do two people inextricably drawn together but separated by an overwhelming obstacle melt into one another?”
‘There are waves’
Paul Eastwick, a psychology professor at the University of California, Davis, and author of “Bonded by Evolution,” studies romantic attraction and says the burst in rom-coms is welcome.
“I definitely get the sense that there are waves and this is the time of year when we get usually one or two surprise, probably streaming, hits in this genre,” says Eastwick, who also co-hosts “Love Factually,” a podcast that uses science to explore the biggest rom-coms.
He says the genre no longer gets the respect it should, recalling that rom-coms used to be big movie events that garnered awards — like “Ghost,” the highest-grossing film of 1990, which earned five Oscar nominations and won two.
“It feels a little marginalized these days in the critic spaces and in the box-office spaces,” he says. “I hope that people don’t stop making these because people clearly want them.”
Some in the bumper crop of rom-coms this winter take the formula and twist it slightly. “Heated Rivalry,” which had an average of 10.6 million viewers per episode in the U.S., makes the lovers same-sex. “Nobody Wants This,” whose second season garnered 8.6 million views in its first four days of streaming, explores religious conversion. “People We Meet on Vacation,” which drew 17.2 million views over its January launch weekend, flips the gender of the partner who is usually the wisecracking agent of chaos.
“I think that’s often what makes some of these very compelling is where you’re able to wink and nod a little bit at the genre and have fun with it while conforming to people’s expectations at least somewhat,” Eastwick says.
As sweet as cake
“Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)” has opposites attract in the very rom-com-friendly setting of New York, but makes the would-be lovers quite ordinary. She’s a coffee store server and he’s a movie theater sweeper.
“Rom-coms tend to be rich white people with time on their hands. And that’s OK. We love it. We love watching them,” says Buchan. “‘But what if you’re shut out of that?’ was part of the question that we were asking when we set out to write it.”
The musical also winks about its adoration of rom-coms. “If this was a movie,” says the smitten British character, “we’d go ice-skating.” In another scene, he decides there should be a montage of her coming in and out of a dressing room in a parade of fabulous outfits. Later, she does.
The creators are admitted huge fans of rom-coms — their gold standard is “When Harry Met Sally” — even as they gently skewer the genre, out of love.
“I think our greatest ambition of all was to write something that not only parodies and questions the mores of that genre and the stereotypes, but also slots into that genre in its own way,” says Buchan.
An elevated rom-com
Director Brett Haley had never made a rom-com before adapting “People We Meet on Vacation” from Emily Henry’s novel. To craft the film, he reached back to ones he adored, like “Jerry Maguire,” “My Best Friend’s Wedding” and “When Harry Met Sally.”
“They’re incredibly elevated. You care about the characters, the writing is impeccable, the performances are impeccable, the filmmaking is incredible,” he says. “To me, we just sort of lost some of that elevation. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong, by the way, with your Hallmark movies or other rom-coms that are a little fluffier, a little lighter. They’re just sort of meant to be put on and enjoyed and not taken really art.”
He took his two star-crossed lovers — Emily Bader and Tom Blyth, playing will-they-or-won’t-they friends — and earned the viewer’s trust: “It was all about grounding the comedy, the romance, the yearning, in reality.”
Haley, too, argues that rom-coms aren’t respected by critics these days. The genre that kicked off with now-classics like “It Happened One Night” and “Bringing Up Baby” is too easily dismissed in 2026.
“If an action movie is elevated and checks all the boxes, you’ll find that critics go, ‘Hey, yeah, this did it. This was great,’” he says. “But when a romance does it and checks the boxes and does everything right, they go, ‘Oh, we’ve seen this before.’”
Haley says despite the critical reaction to rom-coms, he believes the average viewer yearns to sit on the couch or go to the theater and share the experience of falling head over heels.
“It’s especially dark right now. And I think that people want to believe in love,” he says. “I think there’s real value in a film that can genuinely make you feel good, even just for an escape for two hours. There is true worth in that.”