Firefly Lane

Even if melodrama isn’t your thing, you have to bow down to these performances. Netflix Firefly Lane is irresistibly addictive, even for the hardest of hearts — even if it definitely falls into the predictable pitfalls of the genre.

It’s impressively breezy for something that pulls in stories of rape, cancer and suicide. That ability to maintain an emotional and aesthetic levity at all times, even amid hefty themes, is something these kinds of shows do incredibly well. They don’t often get enough credit for that. Even if we weren’t in the midst of a pandemic, Firefly Lane’s cosy gentleness would be something to be thankful for.

Based on the novel by Kristin Hannah, “Firefly Lane” is so efficient it nearly takes the guilt out of guilty pleasure.

“Firefly Lane” will likely have hooked viewers, thanks largely to Heigl and Chalke, who are great separately and even better together. ... It’s easy to care about these women, and easier to care about their friendship. There’s nothing wrong with some healthy, soapy melodrama and a little sentimental hokum in one’s viewing diet.

While the plot can be hysterical and the styling is off the wall, the central friendship is not just believable, but also endearing. Thanks to specific, detailed character arcs that feel true to Tully and Kate; grounded lead performances, from Skovbye and Curtis as well as Heigl and Chalke; and surprisingly decent dialogue, the genuine warmth at its core is palpable. Like the wedge of cheese it is, Firefly Lane goes down easy with a glass of wine.

If you drop in for a visit, you'll probably be inclined to keep the lights on until the end.

Careens back and forth between three main timelines with such frequency and often with such heavy-handed stylistic touches, it actually undercuts the dramatic impact of this well-made, well-acted and well-intentioned emotional rollercoaster of a story.

Despite its many parallels to tearjerkers past, “Firefly Lane” loses out on much of its potential emotional resonance by getting lost in its own narrative trickery.

Heigl and Chalke both give compelling performances, but they are hampered by the show’s circular structure. ... The show truly fumbles when it tries to take on bigger issues. ... The strongest part of the show is the ones with the girls as teens in 1974. Skovbye and Curtis have a natural rapport, and their narrative moves forward in delightful and compelling ways.

Firefly Lane is a show that’s better in concept than in execution. But considering the ideas it’s exploring are relatively unique in the TV landscape, it’s at least a mom show with merit.

Firefly Lane would be entirely forgettable without Heigl and Chalke — which is both a compliment and a disappointment.

“Firefly Lane” is determined to wring tears and laughter out of you, and it does — it’s just that more often than not, it does that unintentionally and for all the wrong reasons. But you can’t lay the show’s problems at the feet of its heroines, who are all varying ranges of great. Chalke and Heigl make the series far more entertaining than it has any right to be.

Curtis and Skovbye enjoy a more natural chemistry than Chalke and Heigl, imbuing the younger actresses’ scenes with a hearty sweetness that contrasts satisfyingly against the thorny resentments of the characters’ older years. Heigl still commands a workable comic timing when it counts, but she's much more uneven than Chalke, who maintains a baseline of solidity even if her innate brightness seems dimmed here.

Ten impossibly fast episodes fly by without them saying anything profound, even in relation to the political eras they occupy, but manage to keep us invested in the lives of two small-town women who are just trying to get by.

So, is Firefly Lane good? Alas, no. But is it entertaining? Kinda — and not even in a mean way. It’s an adequate time-passer till the shows for which you’re really jonesing are back on. There’s no more shame in indulging in it than there is in equating sex to ice cream.

[Heigl] is just right for the role of a damaged star who’s always just about to go off the rails. Chalke, from “Scrubs,” is fine, although a bit miscast as the shyer, less glamorous one. The two actresses, along with the two who play them as teens, are as good as they can be, given the flatness and redundancies of the script. They gamely play out all the crying, and yelling, and cuddling, as the story unfolds busily, randomly, and, ultimately, unsatisfyingly.

Firefly Lane’s weaknesses, including a rushed cliffhanger on the status of the friends’ relationship in the final episode, far outweigh its strengths, most notably the darker patterns – Tully’s possessiveness, Kate’s passivity – to their friendship. But it knows the power of easy, submergible TV, which will likely more than outweigh its schlock.

Firefly Lane has some good things going for it: it’s a celebration of lifelong female friendship with its heart in the right place. But it aims higher and misses: not funny enough to make you laugh and not deep enough to make you cry.

Where This Is Us at its best (or Lost, for that matter) uses developments in one timeline to complement or explain what’s happening in another, Firefly Lane too often feels like it’s bouncing around at random. And with few exceptions (the teen timeline has an effective sexual-assault storyline), nothing feels like it matters.