NBC's "comic anthology drama" called "Love Bites," which launches Thursday night at 10, isn't starting with the greatest buzz.
But Constance Zimmer and Greg Grunberg, who star as a happily married couple in Venice Beach, Calif., are choosing to accentuate the positive.
"It's the TV version of 'Love, Actually,'" says Zimmer, who is probably best known from "Boston Legal" and as studio head Dana Gordon on "Entourage." "It's a comedy. It's fun."
Also, she adds, "I spend a lot of time in my underwear. That's not why I took the show, but it's good because it makes me work out a lot."
Grunberg, whose most recent major role was Detective Matt Parkman on "Heroes," says "Love Bites" gets to tackle the tough issue some shows never get around to.
"We have an episode on people's fantasies during sex," he says. "Hers is something about a fireman. Mine is about a barista. But then when it turns out to be the barista at the place where I really get my coffee, that's a whole different thing."
Each episode of "Love Bites" is divided into three parts, with Zimmer's and Grunberg's characters, Colleen and Judd Rouscher, geting 20 minutes. The other regular who gets her own third of the hour is Becki Newton, who plays a single New Yorker named Annie Matopoulos. In contrast to the blissfully content Rouschers, Annie is aggressively in the market for her fella, whom she jokingly calls "Mr. Right Now."
The third part of each episode will be one-shot vignettes with guest stars like Jennifer Love Hewitt and Craig Robinson.
The three parts of each episode are described as "loosely connected" stories on the general themes of love, sex, marriage and dating.
If this all sounds familiar to old-timers, that could stem from the resemblance of "Love Bites" to the early-'70s ABC "comic anthology" "Love, American Style."
That series was successful, and one of its sketches became the pilot for "Happy Days."
"Love Bites" hasn't started quite that auspiciously. The pilot was picked up by NBC in early 2010, but it didn't make the fall schedule and even in a year when NBC canceled every one of its new dramas, it never found a place for "Love Bites."
So now it's become a summer series, which is commonly considered a "burnoff" in the TV game.
But it could become more if it catches on, and Zimmer says she's hopeful.
"For a while, we thought the show was never going to air at all," she says. "So we're just happy people can see all our work. Plus we filmed it so long ago that I see it now and I look a lot younger."
But once viewers find it, she says, they may like what they see.
"It's light," she says. "I don't want to see another show about people dying. We've got enough of those."
But Constance Zimmer and Greg Grunberg, who star as a happily married couple in Venice Beach, Calif., are choosing to accentuate the positive.
"It's the TV version of 'Love, Actually,'" says Zimmer, who is probably best known from "Boston Legal" and as studio head Dana Gordon on "Entourage." "It's a comedy. It's fun."
Also, she adds, "I spend a lot of time in my underwear. That's not why I took the show, but it's good because it makes me work out a lot."
Grunberg, whose most recent major role was Detective Matt Parkman on "Heroes," says "Love Bites" gets to tackle the tough issue some shows never get around to.
"We have an episode on people's fantasies during sex," he says. "Hers is something about a fireman. Mine is about a barista. But then when it turns out to be the barista at the place where I really get my coffee, that's a whole different thing."
Each episode of "Love Bites" is divided into three parts, with Zimmer's and Grunberg's characters, Colleen and Judd Rouscher, geting 20 minutes. The other regular who gets her own third of the hour is Becki Newton, who plays a single New Yorker named Annie Matopoulos. In contrast to the blissfully content Rouschers, Annie is aggressively in the market for her fella, whom she jokingly calls "Mr. Right Now."
The third part of each episode will be one-shot vignettes with guest stars like Jennifer Love Hewitt and Craig Robinson.
The three parts of each episode are described as "loosely connected" stories on the general themes of love, sex, marriage and dating.
If this all sounds familiar to old-timers, that could stem from the resemblance of "Love Bites" to the early-'70s ABC "comic anthology" "Love, American Style."
That series was successful, and one of its sketches became the pilot for "Happy Days."
So now it's become a summer series, which is commonly considered a "burnoff" in the TV game.
But it could become more if it catches on, and Zimmer says she's hopeful.
"For a while, we thought the show was never going to air at all," she says. "So we're just happy people can see all our work. Plus we filmed it so long ago that I see it now and I look a lot younger."
But once viewers find it, she says, they may like what they see.
"It's light," she says. "I don't want to see another show about people dying. We've got enough of those."
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