Love Life

The show is stuffed with references to romantic comedies of the past, from Love Actually all the way back to Jane Austen. Love Life displays this self-knowledge then doesn’t quite know what to do with it. A fun watch, but it feels like a wasted opportunity.

A few more risks could have been taken, especially in its portrayal of a rather blandly wholesome lead, but it’s an easily binged watch, with narrator Lesley Manville bookending each episode soothingly. If it’s to return, let’s just hope the life at its centre is one that’s a bit easier for us to love.

“Love Life’s” meandering uncertainty about its story leads to a great-looking show wobbly in a way a cabler graded on quality every time would likely force to refine and redefine. As it stands, though, “Love Life” is a piece of content that makes for amiable company and that doesn’t stand out as particularly grievous; as part of a library graded on capacity rather than curation, it fits right in.

One would like to be less conscious of the fact that Darby is living a lie, or a series of them, or indeed is a character in a TV series; nevertheless, anyone who has has been in a relationship of any length will find some behavior here to accuse themselves of. ... Kendrick is well cast, and as an excuse to hang out in her company, “Love Life,” frustrating as it sometimes is, will do.

It’s “Sex and the City” Lite, with none of the sparkle and of-the-moment zeitgeist of that HBO hit.

By the end of the eight episodes screened for critics (out of the full season’s 10), the only indicators of Darby’s growth are material ones: better clothes, accessories, and apartments.

“Love Life” has its mild virtues for rom-com addicts who enjoy a good meet-cute every now and again. But the anthology show, starring and executive produced by Anna Kendrick, trades in tropes that are as overused on TV as the word “tropes” is in TV criticism. ... The flatness of the plot turns, many of which recall the less sexual arcs in “Sex and the City,” is compensated, to some degree, by the characters and the actors surrounding Darby.

“Love Life” treads well-worn ground without blazing a unique path for itself. Like most outings in the genre, it’s not without a fair share of charm to make the time enjoyable – although these pleasures stem largely from star Anna Kendrick and her earnest embrace of the middling material.

"Love Life" is not "My Best Friend's Wedding." At its best, it falls squarely in the "thing I wouldn't mind falling asleep to on a plane" genre. ... If "Love Life" suffers from its stale concept and execution, it is done no further favors by Kendrick's rote performance.

“Love Life” is far from the first story to follow a person who has centered her own life on the pursuit of romantic love, nor is it the first to acknowledge that she’s doing so, to her detriment. “Love Life” makes the mistake of doing the same, and that’s apparent from the first hour. That it recovers at all is due mainly to Kendrick.