How ‘Modern Love’ brings the romance
Prime Video show is based on a column by New York Times
Modern Love, a new series from Amazon, takes its name, theme and most of its main characters and storylines, such as they are, from a weekly column in the Style section of the New York Times.
In it, guest writers tell a personal tale of love in all its shapes, sizes, colours, flavours and ages. (It is also a podcast for which well-known actors read the columns.) The series is just about what you might expect from the Style section of the New York Times coming to life: a little patrician, kind of pleased with itself, but well made and certainly good-looking.
The series was developed by John Carney, who directed Once and wrote and directed Sing Street and knows a thing or two about putting a lump in the throat of the slightly arty mass market. Its cast is starry yet interesting: Anne Hathaway, Tina Fey, John Slattery, Dev Patel, Catherine Keener, Andrew Scott and Jane Alexander.
A range of stories is clearly what Carney had in mind. Nothing says you have to watch them all. To help you decide, I bring you this semi-informative, quasi-scientific, intermittently analogous field guide to the rare birds and odd ducks of Modern Love.
WHEN THE DOORMAN IS YOUR MAIN MAN.
Cristin Milioti is a freelance book reviewer somehow able to afford a nest in a building with a white-glove doorman (Laurentiu Possa) who is protective but not territorial, able to smell a bad boyfriend at 60 paces. (The apartment was passed down in the family, so the rent is low, we are pointedly told.) Well, I thought it was rather sweet, in spite of Los Angeles being characterised as “phoney.”
WHEN CUPID IS A PRYING JOURNALIST.
Catherine Keener plays a reporter, based on essayist Deborah Copaken (war photographer, TV producer, novelist, you don’t want to know), interviewing tech success Dev Patel for the New York Times Sunday magazine — you can bet your meta. The talk turns to lost love. Each has a story.
RALLYING TO KEEP THE GAME ALIVE.
The one with Fey and Slattery. Written and directed by Sharon Horgan (Catastrophe) from a column by novelist Ann Leary, the wife of Denis Leary — which accounts for Slattery’s character being an actor named Denis, though he’s more
Roger Sterling than Leary here. The stars play a married couple who may be coming to the end of their relationship, or maybe not.
TAKE ME AS I AM, WHOEVER I AM.
Terri Cheney (highpowered showbiz lawyer turned mental health advocate, wrote the essay on which this episode is based. Anne Hathaway convincingly changes her feathers from sparkly to darkly as the mood strikes her (without warning), confusing a suitor, among others. Habitat: Fairway Market’s Red Hook, Brooklyn, branch, in whose parking lot an imaginary production number takes place. Who’s that cameo? Judd Hirsch!
AT THE HOSPITAL, AN INTERLUDE OF CLARITY.
The woman (Sofia Boutella) wears the plumage while the man (John Gallagher Jr) is drably arrayed in this story of a date that goes good by going bad.
SO HE LOOKED LIKE DAD. IT WAS JUST DINNER, RIGHT?
Fatherless Julia Garner imprints fatherhood upon handsome boss Shea Whigham, who gets the wrong idea. Audrey Wells’ script goes further than Abby Sher’s one-dinner essay. A romcom in which the rom is wrong. Kind of creepy but a little poignant too.
HERS WAS A WORLD OF ONE.
Adapted from Dan Savage’s much darker DJ’s Homeless Mommy, set alight to warm the cockles of the heart and make s’mores over. Andrew Scott and Brandon Kyle Goodman play a gay couple looking to adopt; Olivia Cooke is the pregnant, homelessas-lifestyle girl — a hobo, I guess — who moves in and turns their lives upside down.