You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll meet cute.

Love is in the air. It’s all around us, in fact, as Wet Wet Wet made very clear a few years back. As the onslaught of Valentine’s Day-related marketing continues and the tidal wave of pink hearts rises against our windowpanes, what better time than now to close the curtains and enjoy some genuinely funny, romantic TV?

When a 90-minute movie won’t do it and you need a proper weekend-long binge, these are the shows to get stuck into.

1. Nobody Wants This (Netflix)

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Whaddaya mean nobody wants this? A pairing of Kristen Bell and Adam Brody? It’s a dream! But in the fictional scenario, there are natural obstacles between these two incredibly charming, attractive and likeable stars. And the key word is natural: nothing about this should-they-shouldn’t-they romance feels forced.

Brody is a progressive rabbi, Bell is a sex-and-relationships podcaster and not Jewish. The question is not should they fall in love – they fall for each other as easily as we fall for them – but a more grown-up point.

Namely, how will these two adults reconcile their cultural differences with their respective communities? Montagues and Capulets have nothing on contemporary Californian society.

2. Emily in Paris (Netflix)

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Fantasy fodder for anyone who’s ever dreamed of moving to Paris and sharing a croissant with a good-looking Euro-stud on the steps of Montmartre. (Does Montmartre have steps? We’ve never actually been.)

Lily Collins plays the titular character, a marketing exec who moves to Paris from Chicago and swiftly dumps her long-distance boyfriend in favour of a life of romantic complications amid the boulevards and boulangeries.

It doesn’t help that her main squeeze (and neighbour), chef Gabriel, is in a relationship with her friend Camille, but if love came easily, there wouldn’t be room for five seasons and counting.

3. Bridgerton (Netflix)

Netflix

While Bridgerton might not be aiming for big belly laughs, it would be a mistake to overlook its comic charm. To be fair, there’s a lot going on to distract you.

As light and delicious as a plate of macarons (and dressed in the same colours), it’s the antidote to staid period drama, bringing sexual yearning to the fore and feeling no shame whatsoever in raiding the romance genre for classic storylines. (The bourgeois girl and the bachelor duke! The posh boy and the maid! The pair who go from friends to lovers!)

Best of all, the show’s full-throated championing of diverse casting overcame decades of fusty objections with a simple “get over it”, and opened the door to fresh opportunities and fresh viewing experiences for us all.

4. Feel Good (Channel 4, Netflix)

Luke Varley//Netflix

Mae Martin’s courage in being their authentic self (they’re trans non-binary) reaps enormous dividends in this funny, truthful and painful semi-autobiographical love story.

It follows Mae, a Canadian stand-up comic working in Manchester, and George (Charlotte Ritchie), a middle-class woman who has only ever dated men until she meets Mae at a comedy club.

Rather than shove in the usual misunderstandings and contrivances as romantic obstacles, Mae’s PTSD and history of substance abuse, and George’s fear of coming out form the spine of the story. Sounds harrowing? Isn’t harrowing!

5. Him & Her (BBC)

A romantic comedy with almost no arc, set in one room. Stefan Golaszewski’s Him & Her follows the warm, meandering conversations between lazy-ass twentysomethings Steve (Russell Tovey) and Becky (Sarah Solemani), two ordinary Londoners with ordinary flaws and bad habits. (You’ll be desperate to chuck Steve’s sheets in the wash.)

Interrupted constantly by their odd neighbour Dan (Joe Wilkinson) along with Becky’s sister Laura and her fiancé Paul, over four seasons the pair negotiate being relatively abnormal in a world full of strange people, building up to the climax of Laura and Paul’s wedding day.

6. Colin from Accounts (BBC)

t might have the least romantic title imaginable, but don’t be misled by the packaging of this Australian gem. Colin from Accounts is in fact the name of a dog, specifically the one accidentally knocked over by Patrick Brammall’s Gordon Crapp while ogling passer-by Ashley (co-writer and Brammall’s real-life wife Harriet Dyer).

The strangers bond over their responsibility for the injured mutt and eventually fall in love. Far from being a romantic fantasy, it’s more like a romantic reality: the pair are bruised, flawed and tricky, yet their determination to make it work… makes it work. True love absolutely does not run smooth.

7. Starstruck (BBC, Disney+)

It would be easy to dismiss Starstruck as a gender-reversed Notting Hill. It absolutely is that, but it’s so much more. Unabashed romcom fan Rose Matafeo co-wrote (with Alice Snedden) and stars in the BBC Three series.

It follows Jessie (Matafeo), a New Zealander working as a nanny and cinema usher in the UK, who has a drunk one-night stand with someone who – wouldn’t you know it? – turns out to be international movie star Tom Kapoor (Nikesh Patel).

Over three seasons they try to balance fame, real life, wealth, poverty and the unavoidable attraction that always seems to bring them back together despite their best intentions.

8. Catastrophe (Netflix, Disney+)

The show that put both Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney on the map – as stars and co-writers, they pour a brutal honesty about the reality of relationships for new parents into the story of Sharon and Rob, a pair who hook up, unexpectedly get pregnant and decide to give it a go.

They both have kids in real life, and pull no punches in depicting the emotional switchbacks that permeate young parenthood: if you and your partner are uncomfortable with home truths, then this might be one to watch alone.

If it sounds like a misery-fest, we’ve sold it wrong, because the truth – unvarnished, inappropriate and raw – is often absolutely hilarious. Especially when presented by supporting cast like Mark Bonnar and Carrie Fisher. (Yes, the Carrie Fisher.)

9. Sex Education (Netflix)

Occupying a strange, mid-Atlantic place where high-school students don’t wear uniforms but all have British accents, Sex Education was a stylistically clever hybrid of teen romance, sexual curiosity, gender questioning and good old soapy drama that appealed far outside the young target audience.

Asa Butterfield stars as Otis, an unassuming boy living in the shadow of his urbane sex-therapist mum and absent father. Despite being inexperienced, Otis has the book-learnin’ to offer valuable sex and relationship advice to his classmates.

Among the stellar supporting cast are his love interest and business partner Maeve (Emma Mackey), gay best friend Eric (Ncuti Gatwa, exploding into the public consciousness), and an assured, slinky Gillian Anderson as Otis’s mum.

10. Big Boys (Channel 4, Netflix)

Jack Rooke’s semi-autobiographical comedy certainly has its share of romance, but at heart it’s an unconventional bromance, between closeted and shy gay student Jack (Derry Girls‘ Dylan Llewellyn) and Danny (Jon Pointing), the straight, sexually confident mature student he shares accommodation with.

Jack is balancing his insecurities with grief for his late father; Danny has troubles of his own buried beneath his cocky exterior. If you don’t think it’s a love story then you haven’t been watching closely enough.