In an age where prestige television is often synonymous with prestige pathology; meth-cooking antiheroes, psychopathic chess prodigies, undead romances; it’s something of a minor miracle when a show chooses to linger in the smaller, messier moments of human connection. The Four Seasons, a new Netflix miniseries conceived by Tina Fey and co-conspirators Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield, offers just that: a beautifully funny and quietly profound meditation on the long, strange trip of modern marriage.
The series is a bold reimagining of Alan Alda’s 1981 film of the same name, which starred Alda, Carol Burnett, and a coterie of comic greats as three long-married couples who vacation together once each season. Fey’s version retains that structure; four trips, four seasons, one emotionally perilous group chat; but updates the cast and context for a generation aging into its own marital discontents. Here, the vacationing trinity includes Kate (Fey) and her husband Jack (Will Forte), Claude (Marco Calvani) and Danny (a superbly tender Colman Domingo), and the mercurial Nick (Steve Carell) and his wife Anne (Kerri Kenney-Silver), whose marriage, as it turns out, is less solid than their hand-thrown pottery suggests.
The show begins in spring, with the couples gathering at Nick and Anne’s lake house for what they assume will be another boozy, mostly benign weekend of charades and passive-aggression. Anne, ever the hostess, has orchestrated a surprise vow renewal; Nick, meanwhile, is quietly preparing to end their marriage. The reveal unfolds not only with a bang but with a sigh, a glance, a shift in seating arrangements; Fey’s script smartly favoring emotional realism over sitcom punchlines. This is not about the big joke; it’s about the joke no one wants to say out loud.
Over the course of eight episodes, the seasons (literal and metaphorical) change, and so do the dynamics. Nick finds himself in the throes of a midlife renaissance-sexual-crisis, dating a woman who is less than half his age and fully fluent in TikTok. Anne, reeling, becomes the show’s quietest emotional core, appearing uninvited at future vacations with the kind of dignity only a truly wounded person can muster. Her lonely presence in the background; especially during an exquisitely uncomfortable Parents’ Weekend at the group’s shared daughters’ college; is the kind of choice lesser shows wouldn’t dare make.
WATCH THE FOUR SEASONS ON NETFLIX
But The Four Seasons isn’t just about Nick and Anne’s unraveling. The beauty of Fey’s script is that no couple is left in the narrative shadows. Kate and Jack navigate the quiet terror of marital inertia: their chemistry flickers then flames, then flickers again. Claude and Danny, meanwhile, explore the complexities of queer aging with a grace and honesty rarely seen on screen. They’re trying to open their relationship while reckoning with the bodily betrayals of middle age. A less confident show would play these moments for farce; The Four Seasons plays them for feeling.
Though shot with a cinematic eye; each season bathed in its own palette and mood; this is not a series that shouts. It trusts its audience. It trusts its actors. And most of all, it trusts the power of ordinary, deeply felt lives. Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons composition recurs throughout the episodes, not as a gimmick but as a motif: the cyclical nature of love, loss, and the relentless march of time.
By the time the series concludes, with a dynamic discussion at the dinner table is both melancholic and heartening, the message is clear. Life doesn’t resolve neatly. Marriages fray and mend, friendships evolve and endure, and every once in a while, someone throws a plate and someone else picks it up. If the show offers comfort, it is this: growing older is not the end of the story, but the beginning of a different kind of love.
The Four Seasons may not trend on social media or spark a hundred thinkpieces overnight, but its quiet brilliance lies in its refusal to chase virality. It is a show for grownups; real grownups, the ones with joint checking accounts and blood-pressure pills and private jokes that have aged like fine wine. It deserves your time. And perhaps, another season.
