There’s a new TV show about L.A. real estate — only it’s meant to tickle your funnybone.
“No Good Deed,” produced by comedian, actress and producer Liz Feldman, is a real estate black comedy set in one of the country’s “most annoying” real estate markets, according to the Los Angeles Times. The series debuts Thursday, Dec. 12, on Netflix.
Like Feldman’s twisty “Dead to Me,” there’s a murder mystery at the center of the story, plus characters who are keeping mum.
The opening shows Paul (Ray Romano) and Lydia (Lisa Kudrow) selling their two-story 1920s Spanish Colonial on a corner lot in Los Feliz (though locals know it to be in Hancock Park).
A slew of characters in the series tour the home during an open house, spied upon via a videocam by Paul and Lydia from a locked room upstairs.
The would-be buyers — ranging from neighbors to an out-of-work actor to a novelist — populate the suspect list in the whodunit. And there’s the passive-aggressive real estate agent Greg (Matt Rogers).
Scenes alternate from heavy drama that would fit in a Sam Shepard play to exchanges between sellers Paul and Lydia that might have stepped out of a John Cassavetes film, according to the Times review.
It’s a far cry from “Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles,” the reality TV series and its knockoffs in New York, Miami and San Francisco, that spawned in 2006 in L.A. The popular real estate genre peers into the personal lives of celebrity Realtors as they peddle high-end homes in Malibu, Beverly Hills and Hollywood.
Feldman, a native of Brooklyn, may be best known as the creator and executive producer of “Dead to Me.” She also created “One Big Happy” and has written for “2 Broke Girls,” “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” and “Blue Collar TV.”
— Dana Bartholomew
