3 couples plus 30 years of friendship — it all adds up in ‘The Four Seasons’

There may not have been many people in the streaming age pining for an updated version of a 1981 Alan Alda movie about the evolution of grown folks’ friendships.

But it turns out Tina Fey’s saucy limited series for Netflix, The Four Seasons, is an entertaining, funny and ultimately telling look at how lifelong friends of a certain age handle some of the biggest changes imaginable.

Friendships that feel like a fantasy

The story begins with what feels like a fantasy: Three middle-aged couples, most of them friends since college, gather for their regular vacation meetup at the sprawling home of the most successful among them, a hedge fund manager named Nick, played by Steve Carell. Over the show’s eight episodes, their get-togethers cover the four seasons — get it? — taking place in spring, summer, fall and winter.

If you’re lucky enough to reach middle age in a long relationship, you know it’s a miracle to find one couple you can stand enough to spend lots of time with — let alone two couples with history going back to your undergraduate days. (When one couple secretly cooked up a strategy for claiming seats at dinner, deftly avoiding the people in their friend group who got to be a little much after a few hours, I felt SO seen.)

The problem is that Carell’s Nick has grown apart from his wife of 25 years, Kerri Kenney-Silver’s mousy ceramic artist, Anne. He tells some of his buddies he plans to divorce her. Carell has developed a potent side hustle by deploying his everyguy charisma to play likable dudes doing terrible things — remember his #metoo-ed TV anchor Mitch Kessler from The Morning Show? — and The Four Seasons works mightily to lend nuance to a decision that could seem awfully selfish on its face.

Casting here is spot-on and only adds to the show’s allure. Fey plays the bossy know-it-all Kate, a no-nonsense type given to acerbic quips, married to Will Forte’s Jack, an emotionally open schoolteacher. Kate’s take on life is summed up in her response to the idea of whether she lucked into meeting Jack, her soulmate: “We’re not lucky. We’re dedicated. Romantic love fades … and then you build something deeper.”

I loved the retort from Carell’s Nick: “Who invited the incel?”

Colman Domingo is Danny, a stylish architect with a questionable habit of fibbing to his devoted Italian stay-at-home husband, Claude, played with an earnest passion by Marco Calvani. Each of these actors wonderfully embodies identifiable characters who somehow don’t come off as cliches or stereotypes, fumbling with the way big external crises — like Nick and Anne’s breakup — affect their own relationships.

One of my fave little moments: When Kate and Jack get into a fight in a space they’re sharing with others, they toggle between being nice to passersby and tossing vicious barbs at each other when alone. Again — I felt very seen.

Built by alums from 30 Rock 

Fey co-created the limited series with Tracey Wigfield and Lang Fisher, writing alums from her supersmart NBC sitcom 30 Rock. So it tracks that this Four Seasons would offer a deeper progression from the 1981 version than its superficial updates, like centering a gay couple that includes a non-white character or giving everyone smartphones and iPads.

These are people often isolated by technology and the roles they are expected to fill in their relationships. Nick, for instance, can’t stand the way Anne zones out while playing a game on her iPad when he yearns for a more exciting life. “We’re like co-workers at a nuclear facility,” he complains to Jack and Danny. “We sit in the same room all night monitoring different screens.”

As these couples reconvene for vacations together in different locations — including time at a back-to-basics “zero-waste” hotel chosen by the 30-something girlfriend Nick eventually picks up after leaving Anne — they face the possibility that their friendships and relationships might be fractured in the same way Nick shattered his family with his actions.

Yes, they’re all a little too oblivious about their wealth and privilege. And there are moments when the clever lines sound a little too much like 30 Rock outtakes. But their wit and wealth also allow the story to focus on their relationships — featuring characters who aren’t worried about paying rent and whose kids are grown or never existed.

Fey has talked in interviews about loving the original movie, despite being about 10 years old when it came out. She even provided a touching cameo part for Alda, who wrote and directed the 1981 film, starring as Jack. I was a teenager then, but also loved it, though I can’t remember many specifics now. What I do remember was a smart, nuanced take on marriage, friendships and the way changing circumstances can affect them both.

I was pleased to find Fey and her crew have expanded on those ideas in wonderful ways, offering a series that is both a touching tribute and knowing update — a meditation on the value of grown-up relationships that is a wonderful antidote to the isolated age we live in.