Ivan Radford | On 11, May 2025

“We’re like coworkers in a nuclear facility,” sighs Nick (Steve Carell), talking about his marriage to Anne (Kerry Kenney-Silver). “We sit in the same room all night, monitoring different screens.” It’s a hilarious but painful assessment of a human relationship both in the modern age and at a certain age in life – and that shrewd combination makes Netflix’s The Four Seasons a hilarious and surprisingly thoughtful delight.

The series is based on the 1981 Alan Alda movie of the same name. Like its source material, it follows three couples through the course of a calendar year, but takes advantage of the longer running time to take them in new and different directions through all manner of added obstacles, celebrations and significant life events.

We begin with the 25th anniversary of Nick and Anne’s wedding. She plans to celebrate with a surprise vow renewal ceremony. He plans to celebrate by breaking up with her. Either way, both are set for an awkward time of it – and so is everyone else joining them for the weekend. That includes Kate (Tina Fey) and Jack (Will Forte), a middle-class couple attempting to ignore their own insecurities, and Danny (Colman Domingo) and Claude (Marco Calvani), whose marriage is becoming increasingly strained. Over time, Ginny (Erika Henningsen) joins the group, a 32-year-old vegan who introduces age-gap tensions into the mix, as well as sharp contrast between younger people and the pressures of middle-age.

It’s a wonderfully volatile mix of personalities and experiences, and the cast are all exceptional at digging into the foibles of each person. Steve Carell dominates proceedings as the self-centred Nick, who veers from being unthinking and horrific to self-aware – his absence as much as his presence is felt by others, particularly his family (Julia Lester is hilarious as Lila, his justifiably outraged daughter who processes her pain through a blistering student play). Kerry Kenney-Silver is endearing as the vulnerable yet resilient Anne, who navigates rediscovering her identity and worth without pity.

Tina Fey is superb as the likeable, relatable one of the group, who has a lot of pent-up frustration that she begins to unpack – much to the surprise of Will Forte’s gentle Jack, who oscillates impeccably between put-upon and petty man-child. (“Complaining is their version of sex,” Nick wryly observes.) Almost every is stolen, meanwhile, by Marco Calvani’s Claude – whose concern for his husband after a recent heart operation is suffocatingly intense as much as it is fawning in its affection – and the effortlessly flawless Colman Domingo as Danny, whose frustration with his smothering husband clashes with his own reluctance to talk about awkward topics.

The group are all – in case the four holidays didn’t give it away – incredibly wealthy, but their glossy lifestyles are entirely offset by the honesty of the scripts (by Fey, Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield). There’s a frank sincerity to the way the show explores generational divides, the toxic impact of poor communication, the human fear of missing out on something or being pst one’s expiry date, the importance of putting work and effort into a relationship to make it work, the risk of being comfortable turning into being complacent, the danger of not being open to change while also valuing what’s already in one’s life. All these are balanced with a gentle heart that doesn’t always make us feel sympathy for these character, but does always treat them as fully rounded people. When we see Nick ask Danny what “fluidity” means, we’re laughing at him rather than shouting angrily at a changing society, but even then we do so without being cruel – it’s a difficult line to tread and The Four Seasons does it with impressive ease.

All this while still delivering constant laughs? It’s a strong recipe for a rewarding box set, and The Four Seasons’ 30-minute episodes – two per season – make it a comfortable journey to go on with these beautifully flawed people. By the end of the eight episode, they’ll feel like more than just coworkers to even the most hard-hearted of viewers.

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