Modern Love (Spoiler-Free) Review

Amazon’s latest television offering sounds great on paper: an anthology series exploring love in the Big Apple, starring the likes of Anne Hathaway, Dev Patel, Tina Fey, John Slattery (Mad Men), and Andrew Scott (the Hot Priest of Fleabag), where each episode clocks in at around 30 minutes. With those bonafides, Modern Love should be a smash hit, right? Well, it turns out that there’s more to creating a satisfying television experience than a string of capable actors and a palatable running time. You need interesting characters and compelling stories to make the show worth watching. And, with the exception of two strong episodes, Modern Love misses the mark.

I feel like I need to preface this review by saying I really wanted to like this series. Honestly, I did. I’ve read the New York Times “Modern Love” column where these tales are drawn from, and I adore this assemblage of actors (Fey and Slattery playing an unhappily married couple was the biggest draw for me . . . which sadly also became one of my biggest disappointments with the series). But what works great as a newspaper column, wherein you can use the power of your imagination to be swept up in the complex and intriguing stories presented,doesn’t translate nearly as well to the screen. At least not in 30-minute bites.

And that’s where I think the bulk of the series’ issues stems from: the running time. By the end of the majority of episodes I felt like I barely had time to get to know these characters and understand their story. The rushed plots and scattered character development make many of the episodes feel confused and unfocused, causing the generally strong performances to feel hollow without the necessary storytelling heft to keep them afloat. I often found myself saying, “That’s all?” at end close of episodes, wondering why I just spent a half hour with such a dull and uninspiring (or, on occasion, plain confusing) story that wasted a great actor.

The two episodes that suffer the most from this are the episodes headlined by Hathaway (as a hot-shot lawyer with a debilitating health secret – which you can figure out much faster than the episode expects) and recent Emmy-winner Julia Garner (as a young adult searching for parental influence in the wrong place – which spirals out of control exactly like you expect it will). Given time to nurture these difficult plots, I think these could have turned into interesting character explorations. But confined to 30 minutes, the stories are equal parts meandering and rushed, taking time in the beginning to lounge around with the premise of the episode only to rush toward the “shocking” endings. The interesting elements here were the performances of complicated characters, but the episodes were far more concerned with trying to shock us with reveals that could be seen coming from miles away. That’s just poor writing. And there’s plenty of that to go around.

Now, there were two bright spots in the otherwise disappointing series. The first was in the series’ premiere episode, starring Cristin Milioti (best known as the titular Mother in How I Met Your Mother) as a woman dealing with a surprise pregnancy. It’s not the traditional romantic love story one might imagine when presented with a series titled Modern Love, but it’s the series’ best example of showing how love is essential to our everyday lives. I found myself genuinely smiling and happy upon the episode’s ending (and it’s a truly happy ending across the board), and eager to dive into the next episode (which was a disappointment). Milioti’s character, unlike many others, is given space to grow and breathe over the course of the episode (it likely helps that this, like the season’s other stand-out episode, takes place over a longer period of time), and you feel by the end that you’ve gotten to know her and the episode’s other crucial character.

Along the same vein, the other successful episode stars Andrew Scott as one half of a gay couple (the other half is played with aplomb by Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman, in the all-too-rare instance of two openly gay actors playing gay characters in a series) trying to adopt a child. The duo end up paired with a homeless free spirit (Olivia Cooke, an actress I didn’t know about until this series, but one to watch). It’s a truncated look at the fears, hopes, and terrifying reality of becoming parents, but it also allows the audience to really get into the psyche of its central character (Scott), and see where he’s being reasonable (kicking Ed Sheeran out of the house is always the right decision) and where he might be overreacting. Sure, the story sounds pretty farfetched when looked at from afar, but the episode lures you in and makes you care about these characters. It’s largely a testament to Scott and Cooke that the story works, as both are utterly compelling in their roles.

So, there are two episodes of Modern Love worth watching. Which is hardly a ringing endorsement, but it’s something. And, I’m glad Andrew Scott is continuing to have a breakout year. But if Amazon is looking for its own award-winning installment in the anthology series wars (a battle that FX and Ryan Murphy continue to dominate), this definitely isn’t it.

Modern Love premieres Friday, October 18 on Amazon Prime.