Netflix’s reboot of The Four Seasons, a modern remake miniseries based on the 1981 film, delivers both heart and humour in equal measure. Charting the lives of three long-time couples in their 50s over the course of a year, revisiting them in each season, this series is one of Netflix’s strongest comedic offerings in recent years.
★★★★☆
Spoilers ahead for The Four Seasons.
The show, season by season, offers a compelling narrative arc that mirrors the unpredictability of adult life, making it feel more novelistic than episodic. Co-created by and starring the ever-brilliant Tina Fey, The Four Seasons is a sharp, sincere, and hilarious series on ageing, marriage, and friendship. Blending Fey’s signature wit and deadpan humour with surprising emotional depth, the series dares to ask what happens when you reach midlife and realise that nothing is quite as settled as you thought. It is about change, chaos, and choosing to grow, even when it would be easier not to.
Fey is joined by an outstanding ensemble: Steve Carell as Nick, Colman Domingo as Danny, Will Forte as Jack (Kate’s husband and college sweetheart), Kerri Kenney-Silver as Anne (Nick’s soon-to-be ex-wife), Marco Calvani as Claude (Danny’s husband), and Erika Henningsen as Ginny, Nick’s much-younger girlfriend. The ensemble’s chemistry is magnetic, making their decades-long friendships feel lived-in and layered. Their banter feels effortless, while their conflicts carry real weight and history. You believe these people have been laughing, arguing, and vacationing together for years.
Each cast member brings nuance to their role, particularly Carell, whose portrayal of Nick blends charm, selfishness, and sadness in a way that feels both familiar and freshly unsettling. Another standout is Calvani’s portrayal of a heartfelt, if not overly attached, compassionate husband, and the newest member of the group.
From the very first episode, The Four Seasons establishes its rhythm, big life events filtered through the lens of close friendships and messy emotional entanglements. The story opens in the spring, when the group reunites at Nick and Anne’s lake house to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. But the celebration is short-lived when Nick confides in Jack and Danny that he plans to leave Anne, just as Anne surprises everyone with plans for a vow renewal. It is a series opening that sets the tone: darkly funny, emotionally raw, and full of the unexpected.
In summer, the group is back together for a vacation, except Nick has brought along Ginny, his 32-year-old girlfriend, whom he has only been dating for two weeks. She has planned the entire trip to a remote eco-lodge, which is immediately revealed to be a hilariously bad fit. By a not-so-coincidence, they run into Anne, who is vacationing solo after discovering the secret vacation through a shared iCloud account with Nick. That little detail is just one of the many generational quirks the show leans into with smart humour and empathy. Even in its broadest comedic beats, the show always loops back to character, deep emotion and struggles. Reminding us that even when your life may feel settled, there are always new bumps on the way. The Four Seasons depicts middle-aged characters as evolving, complex people still capable of heartbreak, desire, foolish choices, and fresh starts. Henningsen’s portrayal of Ginny and Kenney-Silver’s portrayal of Anne avoid caricatures; instead, both characters hold themselves with surprising dignity, resisting the easy route of the ‘scorned wife’ and ‘trophy girlfriend’ stereotypes. The show excels at generational commentary without being patronising, and the contrast between the Gen X protagonists and Millennial Ginny is mined for humour, but it pays off.
By fall, the group reconvenes for Family Weekend at Danny, Kate and Jack’s alma mater, where Kate and Jack’s daughter, Beth, Nick and Anne’s daughter Lila, are students. Emotions run high, and tensions peak when Lila debuts a student play based on her parents’ divorce. It is an unfiltered and devastating look at what it feels like to be the collateral damage of your parents’ reinvention. This chapter of the show is perhaps its most emotionally rich, peeling back years of silent resentment, long-standing betrayals, and unspoken disappointments. Every character is forced to face the choices that have defined them and reflect on how their lives have changed since college.
Winter brings a tragic shift. The group splits up for New Year’s Eve, with Nick heading off to a ski trip with Ginny and her much younger friends, with whom he struggles to bond. He’s brought full circle to fall, playing the iPad games he complained about Anne always playing, acting as a keen reminder that all relationships have problems. The rest of the group are on their annual NYE mountain getaway, where Anne has brought her new boyfriend, Terry. Everything changes when Kate discovers a series of missed calls and messages from Ginny. Nick has died in a car accident. In true The Four Seasons fashion, the moment the news is delivered is undercut with comedic awkwardness: Kate and Jack walk in on Anne to break the news, but find her in a rather compromising situation with Terry. The group prepares for Nick’s funeral, but things quickly spiral. In a moment of stunned silence, in the final scene, we learn that Ginny is pregnant, ending the show with hope for new beginnings and the reminder that everything is always changing.
The Verdict
The Four Seasons is unafraid to depict middle-aged characters not as sidekicks or punchlines but as fully realised people. This is a show that embraces the mess. It revels in the chaos of found families, redefined relationships, and the constant surprise of what life throws at you next. Whether it is an exploding pottery studio, a hurricane evacuation, or falling into a frozen lake, The Four Seasons reminds us that there is beauty in the breakdown, humour in the heartbreak, and always another season to begin again. Through moments of absurdity, emotional honesty, and grief, the series paints a vivid portrait of what it means to grow older without necessarily growing up.
Words by Maicey Navarro Griffiths
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