It’s fitting that Amazon’s “Modern Love,” which debuts Friday and draws its stories from the New York Times column of the same name, puts forward the best version of itself in the very beginning. No one who has ever dated needs reminding that first impressions can be misleading, but the solid narrative skills and excellent casting on display in the premiere episode help prop up the wispier aspects of this inconsistent but sometimes charming anthology series.
In that episode, Cristin Milioti plays a single New Yorker whose relationship with her doorman (the wonderful Laurentiu Possa) becomes the unexpected and occasionally irksome cornerstone of her life. This unlikely duo’s saga — which, like a number of other installments, doesn’t hinge on romantic love — is given lyrical, wise treatment by the writer, director and executive producer John Carney (“Once,” “Sing Street”). Milioti and Possa, who bring very different but ultimately harmonious energies to the tale, are delightful to watch together.
Milioti’s character lives in a lovely doorman apartment on a freelance book reviewer’s income, a scenario that, even with rent control, is more fanciful than anything that ever transpired on “Game of Thrones.” Similar real-estate porn is on display in a number of other episodes, which mostly revolve around hyper-articulate middle- and upper-middle-class characters. A few days after watching these episodes, décor details of some of the boho-affluent homes were easier to recall than the stories that took place within those dwellings. (For some viewers this will be a feature, not a bug.)
“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. And there’s certainly room for this kind of artisanal woolly sweater on the TV scene: The real world and the headlines it generates are not much fun these days, and when the actors in the best-written “Modern Love” installments are on their A-games, it’s hard to resist the appeal of these amiable, slightly world-weary stories of connection in the big city.
That said, the most pleasing thing about the show may be its format: Each episode lasts a half-hour. Thus if you don’t understand why, say, the recent Emmy winner Julia Garner and the versatile character actor Shea Whigham — both terrific in many past projects — are stranded in a flat, meandering story that never quite gels (“So He Looked Like Dad. It Was Just Dinner, Right?”), at least you won’t be wondering for long.
The fifth episode (“At the Hospital, an Interlude of Clarity”) similarly drops its two lead actors into a getting-to-know-you story meant to showcase the characters’ spiky, halting chemistry. Unfortunately there’s no spark evident between Sofia Boutella and John Gallagher Jr., despite the actors’ game efforts, and that glaring absence makes the thinness of their story and the forced, brittle nature of their dialogue more apparent. All in all, about half of the episodes of “Modern Love” make strange decisions about what to spend time on, a dicey proposition when there’s only 30 minutes to work with.
Of course, the reasons for some storytelling shortcuts are obvious, if not fully justifiable. Anne Hathaway stars in “Take Me as I Am, Whoever I Am” as a woman whose career and romances go awry because she’s secretive about the challenges that mental illness creates in her life. The episode includes a decent but unnecessary song-and-dance number and other moments of highly dramatic filler, all of which reinforces the notion that the episode was constructed more as a showcase for Hathaway than as an insightful character portrait. She supplies some raw, gripping moments, but they mostly arrive at the end, after a string of repetitive scenes that drain the premise of momentum.
If you were excited to see Tina Fey and John Slattery play a bickering married couple in an episode written and directed by the “Catastrophe” co-creator Sharon Horgan, the slightly deflating reality is that the result is merely acceptable — no more, no less.
Scenes of couples throwing passive-aggressive darts at each other in a therapist’s office are not rare on TV. The kind of rebuilding attempts that are necessary to bring a dying long-term relationship back to life — moments often brilliantly explored on “Catastrophe” — would have given both actors more to work with. But too often the episode, “Rallying to Keep the Game Alive,” speeds past the juiciest, thorniest, most revelatory moments. Still, it’s not exactly punishment to see Fey and Slattery share their wry camaraderie onscreen.
A flashback-driven episode starring Dev Patel and Catherine Keener, in which the two leads recount stories of love and regret, is ultimately more effective. If the core stories wrap up a bit too neatly, the actors’ empathic skills and natural charisma are more than worth the price of admission.
All in all, the three finest episodes — the first, seventh and eighth — have a bit more heft, depth and clarity than the others.
The seventh episode tells the story of a married couple’s spiky relationship with the woman having their baby, and in it, Andrew Scott and Brandon Kyle Goodman are both deeply appealing and believably nervous. Scott radiates an intelligent, thoughtful curiosity here, as he did as the Hot Priest in “Fleabag.” As a public service, I must inform you that he never dons a cassock, which may increase or decrease this half-hour’s overall hotness levels, depending on the viewer’s preferences.
It’d be churlish — and anti-romantic — to give away too much about the season finale of “Modern Love,” which has a closing sequence that is worth watching, even if you skip around before you arrive at the end. It’s not a spoiler to say that Jane Alexander is sensational in this meditation on the risks and rewards of love that arrives late in life. This episode mixes the sweet, the sad and the bittersweet in just the right proportions, and who knows, it may well provide a road map for the show’s future. If Amazon decides “Modern Love” deserves a second date, that is.
