Tina Fey’s new Netflix dramedy trades fantasy for familiarity in a funny, moving ode to enduring relationships.

 In a streaming landscape flooded with hyper-staged matchmaking shows like Love Is Blind and The Ultimatum, The Four Seasons, created by Tina Fey, arrives like a bracing gust of autumn wind. Instead of zeroing in on the adrenaline rush of first dates and beachside seductions, this eight-part Netflix series leans into the quiet, tangled, and occasionally infuriating realities of long-term love.

Adapted from Alan Alda’s 1981 film of the same name, The Four Seasons stars Fey herself alongside Will Forte, Colman Domingo, Marco Calvani, Steve Carell, and Kerri Kenney-Silver as three couples navigating the less glamorous end of romance: middle age. Their characters are bound not just by love, but by years of obligations, children, and shared Netflix passwords. They bicker, reminisce, disappoint one another, and ultimately stay together—not out of naïve passion, but through sheer, stubborn commitment.

From the opening line—Forte’s Jack declaring, “It is rare in this life to find your soulmate, yet somehow all six of us have done it”—the series sets out to deflate its own premise. Fey and her co-writers Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield are less interested in idealising romance than they are in exploring its contradictions. These characters aren’t yearning for their honeymoon phase—they’re stuck in the rut of emotional co-dependency, comparing their marriages like old cars at a motoring show. Yet, somehow, they soldier on.

Rather than climaxes and catastrophes, the drama plays out in awkward silences, petty grievances, and the slow erosion of passion. There’s no explosive affair (well, not for most), no big romantic gestures. And that’s precisely the point. The show is structured like a Vivaldi concerto—cyclical, textured, and subtly evolving.

The standout strength of The Four Seasons is its refusal to play by streaming’s current rules. It doesn’t chase Gen Z with trendy slang or love triangles—it speaks directly to the audience most overlooked by contemporary TV: 30- and 40-somethings deep in the trenches of everyday life. Where other series serve fantasy and froth, Fey offers a delicately seasoned stew of compromise, regret, and laughter.

Steve Carell’s character, Nick, flirts with the idea of escape—through a younger woman and a midlife crisis—but his is the exception that proves the rule. Around him, his friends quietly absorb their frustrations. They don’t leave their marriages—they live within them. And though Carell delivers the show’s most outwardly dramatic arc, it’s Julia Lester’s performance as his daughter that lands the sharpest jab. “We are born alone, we die alone,” she says flatly, “and in between, we lie to each other.” It’s a line loaded with both Gen Z cynicism and an older generation’s weary acceptance.

That audiences have embraced this modest, emotionally literate show isn’t surprising—it’s long overdue. Netflix, typically allergic to understatement, has taken a risk by backing a series with no reality-show theatrics or genre twists. It has paid off. The Four Seasons has climbed the platform’s internal charts, proof that authenticity can still cut through algorithms.

Fey’s script, peppered with dry wit and aching truths, never settles for easy sentiment. Instead, she offers something better: a love story not about soulmates destined to meet, but about couples learning how to stay. Relationships, The Four Seasons insists, are not sustained by chemistry or fate—they survive on patience, timing, and the odd well-timed insult.

Just like its title suggests, love—true, enduring love—isn’t a single season. It’s all of them.