The Mindy Project Season Three   Starring: Mindy Kaling, Chris Messina, Ed Weeks, Ike Barinholtz and Beth Grant Distributor: Fabulous Films Ltd / Fremantle Media Enterprises RRP: £24.99 Certificate: 12 Release Date: 14 November 2016

The Mindy Project is an American romantic comedy, which has been running on Fox since 2012. Fox eventually cancelled the show after three seasons, although Hulu picked up the show to produce a fourth and a fifth season. The show was the brainchild of Mindy Kaling, who also plays the titular role and if you’re not sure where you have seen her before, she had a role in the American version of The Office.

The show is very loosely based on her mother who was working as an obstetrician/gynaecologist when she met her father. Mindy started in comedy as a stand-up and the show reflects her early experiences, mostly in the structure of the show. There are no long takes as the show is cut up into short sections, so if you don’t like the current joke the next is only a few minutes away.

The Mindy Project: Season Three (2014 – 2015) covers all twenty-one episodes spread across three DVDs.

The story picks up where season two ended, with Mindy in a romantic relationship with Danny (Chris Messina), unfortunately she has a reality issue. Afraid that the relationship might not be real she shares their most intimate bedroom secrets to all at work, on the basis that if everyone else knows and accepts that they are a couple then it becomes transformative, reinforcing and securing their relationship. Danny has a different take on having his bedroom prowess becoming public knowledge.

Through the season the show traverses the usual rom com formulas, bringing back Mindy's ex (Glenn Howerton) who has to bail her out of an accusation of tax evasion, she has to impress her prospective mother-in-law (Rhea Perlman), and the rest is the usual contrived occurrences with her relationship with Danny providing the glue which keeps the whole thing together.

The set does come with a number of extras. Disc one has a couple of deleted scenes, this increases to six for disc two. On disc three this falls back to five. Not bad, but it would have been nice to have input from the show’s creator and star. Overall, it’s not a bad show and the quirkiness of Mindy goes a long way to carrying the series, without her there would be a lot less interest.

I can kinda see why Fox cancelled the show after this season as it relies too heavily on its central character which means that Mindy becomes overexposed. There is no other character that can really act as either a counter weight or take some pressure off. Sorry to say I found a lot of the supporting cast too generic.

6

Charles Packer