Modern Love
Amazon Prime Video, from Friday 18 October
T
he last time Amazon Prime made a big, star-studded anthology series, it was pretty much a disaster. That was almost exactly a year ago, when The Romanoffs arrived. Despite being written by Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner, all eight stories managed to be clunky and boring. Now they’ve boldly unleashed Modern Love, also comprised of eight episodes, most (but not all) written and directed by filmmaker John Carney, of Sing Street fame. They’re based on true-life tales of love and relationships recounted in a weekly column in The New York Times, which gives an air of authenticity notably lacking in The Romanoffs. Among the standouts is a story starring Dev Patel as the creator of a dating app who’s interviewed by a reporter (Catherine Keener) and they end up sharing their poignant experiences of true love gone wrong. The Hot Priest himself, Andrew Scott, stars in another episode as a successful dude living a seemingly contented life, who’s persuaded by his boyfriend that they should become surrogate parents, and the mother turns out to be a homeless woman. It’s a story as much about entitlement and class as anything else, and has a genuinely moving ending. But the real highlight episode is written and directed by Sharon Horgan, and features Tina Fey as the dissatisfied wife of a famous creative type. Their attempts to save their marriage seem doomed, until Fey’s character manages to get to the nub of her issue with her husband. It’s a strikingly well-observed triumph, which proves once again that Horgan is the absolute best at writing about, well, modern love.