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The softcore moviesFour Seasons isn't what you'd expect from a Tina Fey project.

The creator of 30 Rockand Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidthas long been associated with whip-smart pop cultural satire and punchlines that fly at a blink-and-you'll-miss-them pace. With The Four Seasons, Fey opts for a slower burn — but that by no means dulls the show's wit or reward.

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What is The Four Seasons about?

Steve Carell, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Tina Fey, Colman Domingo, Marco Calvani, and Will Forte in "The Four Seasons." Credit: Courtesy of Netflix

Co-created by Fey, Tracey Wigfield (Great News), and Lang Fisher (Never Have I Ever), The Four Seasons re-invents the 1981 Alan Alda film of the same name as a Netflix miniseries. The conceit remains the same: Three couples go on a new vacation every season, with each trip fittingly scored by Antonio Vivaldi's Four Seasons violin concerti.

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Our couples are Jack and Kate (Will Forte and Fey), for whom "complaining is their version of sex;" Nick and Anne (Steve Carell and Kerri Kenney-Silver), whose marriage has hit a bit of a stale patch; and Danny and Claude (Colman Domingo and Marco Calvani), whose differing views on an upcoming medical procedure drum up tension by the bucketful.

(Notably, Claude has been gender-swapped from the original film's Claudia. That's just one of several changes Fey, Wigfield, and Fisher throw into the show in order to make The Four Seasons their own.)

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These three couples have known each other for decades, as evidenced by the ensemble's easygoing comedic chemistry. (With such a monster cast, would you expect anything else?) Still, the show's first two episodes — the "Spring" section — feel a little off. The pacing is slower than that of other projects from these creators, yet it's at odds with the frantic rush to establish the couples' dynamics.

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This chafing may be due in part to adjusting The Four Seasons' story from film length to TV length, but there's a narrative reason for it too. Things feel wrong because something is wrong: Nick is planning to leave Anne, a decision that will not only wreck their marriage but also tear apart the friend group.

By the "Summer" section, that breakup has occurred, and Nick has moved on to a much younger woman: 30-year-old Ginny (Erika Henningsen). Her arrival shakes up both the group's dynamic and the show's entire trajectory, ushering in pitch-perfect cringe comedy and pertinent questions about marriage and relationships.

The Four Seasons offers up a fascinating, hilarious look at marriage and friendship.

Colman Domingo, Tina Fey, Erika Henningsen, Will Forte, and Steve Carell in "The Four Seasons." Credit: Francisco Roman / Netflix

Each of the couples at the heart of The Four Seasons face their own issues, from lack of communication to clinginess. But those terms are really just surface-level descriptors for the complex webs Fey, Wigfield, and Fisher weave between their pairs. These relationships feel lived-in, with years of of history built into every scene. Every pairing gets their moment in the sun, just as every pairing experiences some kind of blow-up or breaking point at a certain point over the course of The Four Seasons.

The same goes for the friendships on display in The Four Seasons. Imagine a full show devoted to the Carrie Coon, Leslie Bibb, and Michelle Monaghan story arc from The White LotusSeason 3, complete with all the behind-the-back gossip and one-upmanship, as well as genuine love for one another. Without a bunch of other guests pulling focus, The Four Seasons dives even deeper into the fraught dynamic of vacationing friends, and the results are at once poignant and hilarious. For every joke or awkward mishap around Nick and Ginny's May-December romance, there's a heartbreaking moment of Nick and Anne's friends trying to reckon with their separation. How do you stay friends with two people you love when one has harmed the other?

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Tina Fey, Colman Domingo, and the entire cast of The Four Seasons shine.

Marco Calvani, Colman Domingo, Tina Fey, and Will Forte in "The Four Seasons." Credit: Jon Pack / Netflix

The Four Seasons' cast matches the show's tone beat for beat, whether it's wrestling with the complexity of relationships and the work that goes into them, or making masturbation jokes.

Fey's wry humor makes a perfect foil for Forte's dorky affability, but the two do their best work in the latter half of the season, when cracks in Jack and Kate's relationship force them to examine some hard truths. Domingo is a standout as the oh-so-cool Danny, who's made all the cooler by Calvani's whole-hog commitment to Claude's fretting over Danny's health. Kenney-Silver moves nicely between pitiable and vengeful as Anne, while Carell miraculously makes sure Nick is a somewhat sympathetic figure, and not just a caricature of a man going through a mid-life crisis. As the odd one out in the friend group, Henningsen nails Ginny's vulnerability and occasional obliviousness, something she and Nick both share when it comes to interactions with Nick and Anne's daughter, Lila (Julia Lester, giving a firecracker of a performance).

With all these excellent performances and an array of picturesque vacation spots from a lake house to a ski resort, The Four Seasons makes for a breezy summer binge. Still, it's the substance that sneaks up on you that really makes The Four Seasons a winner, even if it's a slower burn from the jump.

The Four Seasons is now streaming on Netflix.

Topics Netflix Streaming