Kerri Kenney, Marco Calvani and Tina Fey in a scene from The Four Seasons.Netflix/Supplied
The Four Seasons, a new Netflix Gen X marriage comedy co-created by and starring 30 Rock‘s Tina Fey, is a slow starter.
But that’s more than made up for by its last three quarters, in which both laughter and tears snowball as the seasonal action moves into winter.
This eight-episode series is inspired by the 1981 film of the same name, which was written, directed by and starred a sitcom hero of Fey’s youth, Alan Alda (as well as Carol Burnett and Len Cariou).
Both creations borrow a name, a four-part structure that moves from spring to summer to fall to winter and a bit of soundtrack from Vivaldi’s violin concerti.
The Four Seasons follows three wealthy New York couples as they take quarterly vacations together.
Kate (Tina Fey) and Jack (Will Forte) are the most seemingly stable and solid of this friend group, which traces its roots back to college days – but their relationship is also increasingly sexless.
Meanwhile, Danny (Colman Domingo) and Claude (Marco Calvani) have a more tempestuous but sexier marriage; their stylish childless lifestyle, however, is complicated by the former’s refusal to fully acknowledge his heart condition and the latter’s sometimes smothering approach to caring for him.
Last, there’s Nick (Steve Carell) and Anne (Kerri Kenney-Silver), whose marriage, it is quickly revealed, is on the brink. This throws the friend group – and its constituent couples – into questioning disarray.
In the first two episodes set in a country house in upstate New York in the spring, The Four Seasons’s source material shows; it feels like a padded-out movie where, at times, the substance of the couple’s discussions about relationships seem phoned in by landline in from an earlier era.
The eight-episode series is inspired by the 1981 film of the same name, which was written, directed by and starred Alan Alda.Netflix/Supplied
But the ensemble’s comic chemistry coalesces in the second section set on a summer trip at a low-luxury eco-resort, organized by Nick’s new younger girlfriend, Ginny (Erika Henningsen).
The drama deepens, too, as the weather cools – and the laughs get richer as a consequence. There are jokes for all seasons, from broad slapstick that Carell and Forte pull off with particular aplomb, to the out-of-nowhere delight of a parody of the first scene from the 1982 Caryl Churchill play Top Girls.
While Alda’s movie is beloved by many, certain contemporary critics found it a watered down and conservative look at marriage compared to the ground-breaking movies of the decade that preceded it.
Reviewing for The Globe and Mail, for instance, the late Stephen Godfrey called The Four Seasons “a kind of Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice for the Moral Majority.”
There’s an element of affluent obliviousness to the main characters in the new version – co-created by Fey with her 30 Rock alumnae Tracey Wigfield and Lang Fisher – that is left unexplored in the scripts and can be off-putting.
These apolitical elite couples with four-times-a-year holidays –and that, just with these friends– seem divorced on many levels from the reality of most of the United States right now or recently.
It stinks things up a bit, too, that Ginny is the only of the main characters who isn’t fully formed; described as 32, she’s written younger, and has a profession, dental hygienist, that seems lifted from an old Woody Allen bit rather than any reality. (Though on the subject of Allen, Fey has a meta-joke about Zelig, which is a highlight.)
None of this is enough to spoil the series about love in middle age, which is ultimately quite moving.
Everyone in the starry cast gets a chance to show the ridiculous side of their character and pull on heartstrings; the four-act structure is not just Vivaldian, but Chekhovian.
The comic spirit of Alda is very much alive in Forte’s performance as the warm and sensitive nice guy of the bunch. Though beneath Jack’s exterior and often choke-on-your-quiche funny foibles, he also shows the secretly roiling resentments.
Of course, Alda himself is very much alive, too. The 89-year-old M.A.S.H. legend makes a cameo where he proves he can still land a punchline. (He previously worked with Fey on 30 Rock, guest starring as the father of Alec Baldwin’s studio executive Jack Donaghy).
Alda himself once attempted to adapt The Four Seasons for television, writing a serialized sequel that ran on CBS in 1984 but was quickly cancelled. There’s enough in Fey’s second TV try to hope for it to become an annual affair.
