Stephanie Hsu is a romantic lead—with a "fucked up" twist—in Peacock's Laid teaser

We’ll take more Stephanie Hsu wherever we can get her, but Stephanie Hsu as the lead of a romantic comedy series? That’s the stuff dreams are made of. As you can see in Peacock’s Laid teaser, though, this is not your average rom-com. No, Laid is laden with double meaning, as in, every time this girl gets laid, someone else gets laid to rest.

Showrunners Nahnatchka Khan and Sally Bradford McKenna (Don’t Trust The B In Apartment 23) said in a statement that they wanted to bring back “the old-school, traditional romantic comedy” but “felt it needed to have some kind of twist.” And what’s more romantic than a murder mystery? According to the Peacock synopsis, “A woman finds out her former lovers are dying in unusual ways and must go back through her sex timeline to confront her past in order to move forward—Laid is a f*cked up rom-com where the answer to ‘why can’t I find love, is there something wrong with me?’ is a resounding ‘Yes. There is. The problem is definitely you.'” The showrunners add, “Please enjoy as Ruby (Stephanie Hsu) searches for love, along with help from her best friend AJ (Zosia Mamet) who makes Ruby’s sex timeline so she can track down all of her exes—the guys, the girls, the one-night stands, the man she only remembers as ‘Green Day Shirt,’ John Early—to tell them… they’re going to die. It’s truly the love story for our times.”  

In the Laid teaser, Ruby goes on a quest through her past not unlike another delightfully off-kilter rom-com series, Lovesick (also known as Scrotal Recall). Except this time it’s not chlamydia the protagonist has to warn past partners about, it’s Sexually Transmitted Death. Luckily, she has Zosia Mamet by her side, who has proven her chops as the investigative BFF over on The Flight Attendant. The cast also includes Glee star and multi-award winning musician and producer Finneas O’Connell as well as Michael Angarano, Tommy Martinez, Andre Hyland, Olivia Holt, David Denman, Chloe Fineman, Ettore “Big E” Ewen, and John Early. Laid premieres on Peacock on December 19.