The Office’s Mindy Kaling is coming to Fox in a new comedy about a woman who always dreamed of her life turning out like a romantic comedy, but finds that reality is a lot trickier to navigate than a movie.

The Office’s Mindy Kaling is coming to Fox in a new comedy about a woman who always dreamed of her life turning out like a romantic comedy, but finds that reality is a lot trickier to navigate than a movie.

 THE CONCEPT

Mindy Lahiri (Kaling) is an OB/GYN in her early thirties, who grew up obsessing over romantic movies. She’s been waiting for her Meg Ryan moment, but instead, she finds herself giving a drunken toast at the wedding of the man she thought was her Mr. Right. Anna Camp (True Blood, The Good Wife) is Mindy’s best friend, who already has a seemingly perfect life with a husband and daughter and all she wants is for Mindy to find happiness as well, but she sees her friend going about it all wrong.

Chris Messina (Damages, The Newsroom) also stars as fellow OB/GYN Danny Castellano, who seems to live for giving Mindy a hard time, but he’s not as rough as he comes off. Ed Weeks plays Dr. Jeremy Reed, a bad boy with a British accent, who Mindy cannot seem to stay away from even though she knows he’s bad for her.

The Mindy Project is produced by Universal Television and 3 Arts Entertainment. Kaling created the series and wrote the pilot and will also serve as executive producer along with Howard Klein, Matt Warburton and Michael Spiller.

MY TAKE

I loved this pilot from the moment it started. Kaling is fantastic and it’s easy to relate to her struggles as she tries to balance her job with the love life that she wants to badly. The dialogue was sharp and funny and there were many ‘laugh out loud’ moments. Kaling has a nice chemistry with both Messina and Weeks and I already like Camp’s character better than I did the last two shows I watched her on.

But what I really appreciated about this pilot was how real Mindy seems. It would be easy for a show like this to be over the top and make her into a caricature, but Mindy is so genuine and determined in her intentions that it is impossible not to root for her, even when she’s doing something crazy like fighting with a doll at the bottom of a swimming pool.

The Mindy Project officially premieres Tuesday Sept. 25 at 9:30 p.m. on Fox, but the network is giving viewers an online sneak peek for two weeks beginning Monday, Aug. 27.

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