In “Laid,” premiering Thursday on Peacock, Stephanie Hsu (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) plays Ruby, a self-centered woman of 33 who discovers that everyone she’s ever had sex with is dead or dead is dying, depending on the order had sex with them. (I was about to write, “slept with them,” but that’s a euphemism that the evidence doesn’t support.)

As seems to be the case in most modern romantic comedies – often in a deliberately self-conscious way – she has regularly gone on dates with poor results, not helped by her own judgmental attitudes. (To underscore the point, she’s a party planner and organizes other people’s celebrations.)

If TV shows, movies and social media are to be trusted, this topic is of great interest to people under 40, 60, 80 years old. The search for the right person, the charming prince or princess, is also the subject of fairy tales, even if the protagonist there does not go through one-night stands on the way to his happy ending, but a lot of driving through the forest, instead of swiping in the direction that interests you.

The realization that she may be some kind of deadly sex Jonah, or unintentional serial killer, finally happens in the first few episodes, starting with the news that someone she had known (and with whom she had met twice). had sex three times) died. The dead “friend” makes Ruby feel very special and she decides to attend the funeral.

“I didn’t give him a chance,” she tells her roommate AJ (Zosia Mamet). “He was a really good person.”

“You used to call him Farty Scorsese,” AJ reminds her, while AJ’s cheerful hippie-slacker-gamer friend Zack (Andre Hyland) suspects that the reason none of Ruby’s “thousands” of dates have proven satisfactory is because of this could have something to do with Ruby herself. (You will have come to the same conclusion.)

At the funeral she learns that the deceased never got over her; And before the day is through, another old partner will die before their eyes. More deaths and death news to follow. Various theories are put forward and rejected as to why this happens. Ruby imagines that she may have a stalker who is killing her old boyfriends, girlfriends and half-forgotten affairs out of jealousy, but since these are caused by a mix of natural causes and terrible accidents, the viewer never takes this seriously; Even the police to whom Ruby turns for help don’t arrive at the station – or “police station”, as she calls it – with a box that she is sure contains a severed head.

AJ (Zosia Mamet, left) and Ruby (Stephanie Hsu) go through a “sex timeline” like a detective series, full of images, yarns and theories.

(Jeff Weddell / Peacock)

However, AJ is only too happy to take up the mystery: “I know every girl is obsessed with murder now, but I started the trend.” She helps create a “sex timeline,” like a murder panel in a detective series Images and text as well as a list of their theories on the case, including “The Moon,” “Nathan Fielder” and “The Reverse Jane Wick.” “I love this for us!” she cries.

In fact, there is no natural explanation for any of this; The deaths are unrelated to anything other than Ruby’s oft-mentioned vagina. Developed by Nahnatchka Khan and Sally Bradford McKenna from a 2011 Australian series of the same name, it largely follows the original’s roadmap – although the earlier series, streaming on Prime Video, which I recommend, is more modest, compact and focused, with significantly different characters. The key to Ruby’s… condition is more or less the same, but while the Australian show sort of shrugs its shoulders and moves on, the American show is much more concerned with causes, motivations and psychology; It requires reasons for the reasons, which seems somewhat incompatible with the fundamental weirdness of the premise. There can be such a thing as too much motivation.

Ruby isn’t the first rom-com heroine to have an obsession with rom-coms – “I want an epic kiss in the rain or a big speech about how someone loves every little flaw in me” – and apart from that whole thing with people dying, her main concern is the handsome Hallmark Isaac (Tommy Martinez), who has hired her to organize his parents’ 40th anniversary. Just the sight of him blows her away. They bond over movie musicals and romantic comedies – Isaac has a too-perfect girlfriend who isn’t a fan – and the ideal of a long, loving marriage.

Although the script is structured to pair them together, in practice Hsu is more in tune with Richie (Michael Angarano), one of her brief flings, whom she remembers only as a “bar trivia guy”; Their mutual antagonism is, of course, the state in which many a movie romance begins, but whether Laid is willing to acknowledge that or even cares is a question this inconclusive first season doesn’t answer.

Broadly speaking, it can be read as a metaphor for sexually transmitted diseases or as a tract against casual sex, the dangers of alcohol, or, most compellingly, drunken sex. (“Maybe it’s something like a redemption of time,” Ruby suggests to a gynecologist, considering the many years that pass between some of her encounters and their fatal consequences, and goes on to suggest, “I rode a donkey older than me went to the Grand Canyon – Could that be related to that?”) But there are no overarching ideas, not least because this curse is specific to Ruby. For a while it seems as if we are watching a story like Groundhog Day or Russian Doll, in which the universe plays a trick on a person so that he can cope with himself and the world; And while her unfortunate situation will force Ruby to confront her self-centered, self-destructive behavior, a mere epiphany probably won’t turn off the tap.

The premise and what it does with it pushes “Laid” into a moral and ontological corner that it temporarily addresses by literally opening a door. (A second season is clearly planned.) But as frustrating as the show can be — and some won’t find it frustrating at all — Khan and Bradford write funny dialogue, and Hsu and Mamet deliver it very, very funny. (Others are good too, notably “Angarano” and “Hyland.”) All episodes air at once to make bingeing easier – and it’s actually easy to binge.