'Selfie,' 'A to Z' and Others Refresh the Romantic Comedy

Three network comedies begin this week, and while they all have one obvious thing in common - the perils of dating in the age of Twitter, Tinder and Snapchat - what they really share is Nora Ephron.

'Manhattan Love Story,' beginning Tuesday on ABC, is a riff on 'When Harry Met Sally.' After a girl who looks a lot like Meg Ryan is set up with a guy who acts a little like Billy Crystal, she accidentally taps something hideously embarrassing into her smartphone.

'A to Z,' Thursday on NBC, is partly set in the offices of an online dating service called Wallflower, but it's a love story that braids coincidence and destiny. It is close in spirit to another Ephron movie, 'Sleepless in Seattle,' though it is also infused with some of the bittersweet self-consciousness of '(500) Days of Summer.'

'Selfie,' a sendup of Instagram-ification that also begins Tuesday on ABC, was fittingly enough released in August as a sneak preview on the streaming service Hulu. It focuses on a narcissistic social media addict who is given a Pygmalion makeover by a somewhat priggish branding whiz. That's Shaw, of course, not Ephron, but the high-concept contemporary twist on a classic story is what Ephron did with 'Bewitched,' a tongue-in-cheek redo of the classic television show that ran from 1964 to 1972.

Ephron made witty, sophisticated romantic comedies for the movies, but that genre has noticeably faded from the big screen in an era when the box office favors animated blockbusters, dystopian parables and comic book heroes. Studios can't easily justify the return on investment in comedies that don't have a built-in audience overseas. In films, fantasy mostly means fighting archenemies, not finding Mr. Right.

So the director who adapted the 1940 Ernst Lubitsch movie ' The Shop Around the Corner ' to address the trends of late-'90s email and megastore bookseller chains in 'You've Got Mail' might cheer on these latest efforts to keep true love alive in the 21st century.

'How I Met Your Mother,' the CBS sitcom that ingeniously dragged out its meet-cute moment for nine seasons, set the standard. The three pilots this week have a lot of charm, and not just because the actors are appealing and deft at rattling off clever, rapid-fire dialogue and acerbic pop culture allusions.

These series tap into some of the most comical missteps of the auto-correct age and the boneheaded things people do when communication is instant, constant, indelible and irreversible.

On ' Manhattan Love Story,' when Dana (Analeigh Tipton) tries to Google Peter (Jake McDorman) on her smartphone, she mistakenly types his name into her status update, which is like telling the world either that they are an item or she is a stalker. Her Type-A friend, Amy (Jada Catta-Preta), who is never not online or on her headset, even while leading a yoga class, lets Dana know instantly, driving Dana to 'undo' her gaffe by pummeling her phone. 'Yes,' Amy drawls, 'if you smash your phone the Internet disappears.'

Dana is a fresh, idealistic newcomer to an endangered industry - she quit everything to move to New York and fulfill her dream of making a difference in book publishing. Peter, on the other hand, is a cynic who works in his family's suddenly booming business: trophy manufacturing.

'They used to only give trophies to winners, now they give them to anybody,' Peter explains, adding later, 'The celebration of mediocrity in this country is the biggest windfall our company has seen in four generations.'

In this invasive world, even inner feelings are not private: Some of the Dana-and-Peter story is told in he-thought/she-thought interior monologues.

' Selfie,' which might as well be called 'My Fair Sales Rep,' has a more limiting conceit: Once the makeover is complete, then what? But Karen Gillan, who played Amy Pond in 'Doctor Who,' is very funny and captivating as Eliza Dooley, a pharmaceuticals firm employee and self-obsessed social media superstar. Or as she puts it to a boyfriend, 'I know it's intimidating to fall for a girl who has a strong pelvic floor and an advertising presence on her Facebook page.'

Henry (John Cho), the firm's marketing genius, has no patience for social media, which he describes as a 'giant fingernail scratching this woman's itch for constant attention.'

When Eliza humiliates herself at work, she begs Henry to help her 'rebrand' her image and make real friends, not just Facebook ones. It's a tough premise to sustain for long, but an amusing one.

' A to Z ' is clever but almost too adorable: Andrew (Ben Feldman of 'Mad Men') and Zelda (Cristin Milioti, 'How I Met Your Mother') meet because she finds an algorithm flaw in the matchup service he works for. He's a hopeless romantic who listens to Celine Dion; she's a tough litigator who doesn't believe in love.

There's a prosaic lining to the sweetness. For one thing, the trajectory of their courtship is given away at the very beginning. Andrew and Zelda 'will date for eight months, three weeks, five days and one hour,' a narrator says wryly. 'This television program is the comprehensive account of their relationship from A to Z.'

' Marry Me ' is the comprehensive account of a proposal. This NBC comedy starting on Oct. 14 stars Casey Wilson ('Happy Endings') as a would-be bride who keeps sabotaging efforts by her boyfriend (Ken Marino) to get engaged. 'Just to clarify, though, we are engaged or we're not?' she asks as he storms out without giving her the ring. 'Because I'd just love to take a victory lap around the Internet.'

Good comedy on network television is harder than ever when cable and the web have access to almost all the same talent but operate with less government regulation and many more mass audience constraints. So it's quite remarkable that so many of these prime-time shows find new ways to tell the oldest story: When Harry Friended Sally and You've Got Text.

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