The Four Seasons review: the couples’ mini-break from hell
Tina Fey and Steve Carell’s Netflix comedy about three couples who go away together four times a year is warm, good-looking and funny enough. It’s very easy to binge, too.
Reviewed, edited and approved by Editor-in-chief Daniel Sköld · Updated 25 October 2026
Contents
Anyone who has ever shared a holiday villa with another couple knows the drill. Day one, everyone’s delighted and someone has brought the good olive oil. By day three you’re quietly counting who hasn’t put anything into the kitty, and you’ve learned more than you ever wanted to know about your oldest friend’s marriage.
The Four Seasons, Tina Fey’s Netflix comedy, takes that small, familiar dread and builds a whole year of weekends away around it. It’s gentle and handsome, and it’s aimed squarely at people old enough to remember the 1981 film it’s based on.
The set-up is simple. Three married couples who have been friends for decades go away together once every season. Kate and Jack (Tina Fey and Will Forte) are the steady ones, or think they are. Danny and Claude (Colman Domingo and Marco Calvani) are the glamorous ones. Nick and Anne (Steve Carell and Kerri Kenney-Silver) are the reason the first weekend goes wrong, because early on Nick announces that he wants out of his marriage.
That’s as far as I’ll go. The rest of the series follows the group through the year’s remaining trips while everyone quietly asks themselves whether their own marriage is a partnership or just a habit. Erika Henningsen joins the cast as things get messier, and Alan Alda, who wrote, directed and starred in the original film, turns up in a cameo.
Who made it, and why it isn’t 30 Rock
Fey created the series with Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield, both of whom worked with her on 30 Rock. If you’re expecting that show’s machine-gun jokes and surreal cutaways, adjust your expectations. This is slower and warmer, and it’s more interested in the silences over dinner than in the punchlines. There are eight episodes of around half an hour each, so you can get through the lot in a couple of evenings, or one long Sunday if the weather’s bad.
The cast is the main draw. Domingo is terrific, all charm and barely hidden anxiety, and Forte gets plenty of laughs out of a man who has become a fussy middle-aged bore without noticing. Carell plays a man in the middle of a midlife crisis as somebody who is sincere, pitiable and infuriating all at once, and he’s good at that. Vivaldi gets a regular airing on the soundtrack, of course.
It isn’t really a show about divorce. It’s about the moment you realise your friends’ marriages are a mirror, and you don’t much like what’s in it.
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What works, and what’s a bit too comfortable
What works is how familiar it all feels. The sniping over room allocations, the competitive cooking and the friend who brings a new partner and expects everyone to be fine with it. Anyone who has done a group trip in their fifties will wince with recognition. It’s also very good-looking, with smart houses, gorgeous scenery and enough linen to stock a branch of John Lewis.
That polish is also its weakness. These people are very comfortable indeed, and their problems rarely feel like they’ll leave a mark. Most of us are fretting over whether £39 Eurostar fares to Paris still exist or whether a fortnight’s package deal in the Algarve has crept past two grand, and it’s hard to feel too sorry for people whose crisis happens in a lakeside house. The laughs come in a steady trickle rather than a flood, and some storylines resolve a little too neatly.
What the critics say
Reviews have been warm without getting carried away. Dave Nemetz at TVLine called it a cosy, witty comedy for grown-ups and compared it to a Nancy Meyers film in series form, which is either a recommendation or a warning depending on how you feel about It’s Complicated. Ben Travers at IndieWire was cooler, calling it “pleasant but perfunctory”. MovieWeb praised the cast but found it “light on laughs”. The Week’s round-up summed up the consensus: fewer jokes than Fey’s earlier work, but more midlife wistfulness, and more heart because of it.
Where to watch The Four Seasons in the UK
All eight episodes of the first series landed on Netflix in the UK on 1 May 2025, and the show is still exclusive to the service. It carries a 15 certificate. Netflix has brought it back for a second series, so if the first one clicks, there’s more to come on the same subscription.
Verdict
The Four Seasons won’t change your life, and it doesn’t try to. It’s a polished, kind-hearted comedy about long marriages and old friendships, carried by a cast you’d happily go on holiday with, though probably not for more than a long weekend. Watch it with your other half, then be ready for a slightly awkward conversation about the couple you always go away with.
Ashley Isaacs picks what's worth your evening – film, TV, streaming, music and books for men 45 and over with limited evenings and too many subscriptions. Reviews of what's new on Netflix, Prime Video, BBC iPlayer and the rest, crime dramas worth a weekend, and classics worth a second look. What's worth watching, what isn't, and where to find it in the UK.
One of Midcent's writers. Spotted something? Write to ashley@midcent.uk.
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