Modern Love

All involved have created a series that matches the tone of its source material; there’s a grace, a sweetness, a delightful vibrancy to these episodes.

Smart and funny and touching and lovely.

The world can seem awfully dark and frightening nowadays. Modern Love is here to tell us that now and then it’s fine to sink into a scented bath of unabashed optimism, which is what this opening instalment delivers.

Among the standouts are “Take Me As I Am, Whoever I Am,” a fine showcase for Anne Hathaway. ... Also good are Tina Fey and John Slattery, who demonstrate instant chemistry despite playing a couple whose marriage has hit a trouble spot. ... Like the best of “Modern Love,” the [first] episode is funny, sweet, and heartfelt without being schmaltzy. At a time when conflict rages across the media, there’s something appealing about pulling up the comforter and falling into “Modern Love.”

Like many an anthology series, it is a bit uneven, sometimes corny and clunky, sometimes wonderfully sweet and sentimental. But when on top of its game, “Modern Love” produces some magically romantic results. The touching first episode is enchanting proof of that. ... Another superb entry stars Dev Patel.

Like an unexpected present, “Modern Love” contains plenty of reasons to smile.

Almost all the choices in Modern Love are the right ones. It's a simple, endearing collection that makes for compelling television.

Despite its varying trials and travails, Modern Love strives for an overall feel-good vibe that isn’t always entirely earned. For the most part, it’s gentle on the mind and soothing to the nerves in times when The New York Times front page is a steady drumbeat of downers.

For the most part, the episodes do a remarkable job of presenting complete and compelling narratives in only 30 minutes.

It’s a pro job, though at times it feels professional in a Madison Avenue kind of way, as if you are being sold something, rather than told a story. Most feel minor, even when the subject is major, perhaps because they’re so faithful to spirit of the essays. I don’t mean that as a criticism. And I did choke up a few times.

Modern Love, when it works, provides the kind of soothing comfort supplied by an inviting armchair, a warm fire, or a mug of hot tea on a chilly night. It’s the TV equivalent of a hand-knit cardigan or an Instagrammable latte; a mood of transitory wistfulness appears to be the goal, not some chest-thumping artistic statement about Life.

OK, so there’s a bit of corniness here and there; the charm of the whole project makes its excesses tolerable, as does the swiftness of the storytelling.

If the stories can fall prey to “Wealthy Upper West Siders: They’re Just Like Us!” self-flattery, most of them are also sincere, thoughtful, and generous of spirit in a way that typifies Carney’s work (see also Sing Street and Begin Again). Not every installment works(*) — the Horgan/Slattery/Fey one is disappointingly one-note (and one of several that would have done well to ditch the original Times headline as its title) — but enough of them hit that narrow but satisfying target of being sweet but not overly saccharine.

Modern Love’s strongest episodes feature well-defined, believable characters whose eccentricities generate, rather than preclude, a sense of familiarity. ... After episode three, however, Modern Love enters a disappointing lull.

John Carney’s series mutes the rich diversity of those experiences to one, long, neutral-toned lifestyle advertisement designed to flatter the paper’s readers and Amazon Prime’s viewers.

The successes, minor and major, somehow make the missteps even more frustrating, because the ingredients for all the episodes are pretty similar. You take a column about someone’s personal experience, add a great cast, and attempt to dramatize that experience in 30 minutes. Yet somehow, only two are unabashed successes.

Perhaps most egregiously of all, Modern Love, the television show, sands down the sharp, cutting, and often brutally introspective edges of Modern Love, the column.

Modern Love had the chance to build upon the Times’ original essays, but to its detriment, the show adapted them as faithfully as possible, yielding mostly dull interpretations.

Episodes begin disorientingly in the middle of something and build toward a reveal, which isn't a bad way to go when you have 25 minutes to tell a thousand-word story, but the payoff doesn’t always seem worth it.

Overall, the feeling is one of anecdotes that have been told over and over until they have been smoothed into one familiar shape, losing all of the rough, awkward edges of what actually happened over time.

Essays are round pegs, and episodes are square holes; few installments of Modern Love carry enough dramatic heft or character work to be worth the effort, and none retain what is so lovely and sharp-edged about the prose that inspired them.

With an ensemble that also includes Tina Fey, Andrew Scott, and Julia Garner, the show feels like something of a missed opportunity. But while the quality isn’t quite up to par across the board, there’s likely still a viable audience for a show like Modern Love. Just don’t be surprised if it’s not for you.

No matter how valiantly they [the cast] push through, there’s only so much they can do with what they’ve got, which is a saccharine series of clichés that promises way more insight than it’s ultimately capable of. .. It serves up plate after plate of lukewarm leftovers that are somehow never filling.

Ultimately, it’s an aesthetically and narratively empty enterprise that confuses treacly, saccharine gestures with a complex understanding of interpersonal relationships. The major hurdle to connecting with Modern Love is that the characters have the depth of a thimble. ... Modern Love is at once empty and retrograde. Its stars, and viewers, deserve better.