When Vivaldi composed his famous Four Seasons concerti, he accompanied them with sonnets to guide his audience through the year. Led from “spring’s beautiful canopy” to the “hard season, fired up by the sun”, through the “songs and dances” of autumn, to, finally, “tremble from cold in the icy snow”. It is no surprise, then, that Vivaldi and the seasons have become so synonymous with the passage through life itself, a universal thread picked up, again, by Netflix’s new comedy-drama miniseries, The Four Seasons.
Three couples operate in social tandem: unglamorous middle-class lovebirds Kate and Jack (Tina Fey, who co-created the series, and Will Forte), extravagant couple Danny and Claude (Colman Domingo and Marco Calvani), and increasingly miserable spouses Nick and Anne (Steve Carell and Kerri Kenney-Silver). Over the course of four holidays (pegged to each of the changing seasons), the group evolves. Nick leaves Anne (“All she wants to do is play this farm game on her iPad,” he laments, “she’s really high on the leaderboard”) and shacks up with the vivacious, young Ginny (Erika Henningsen). Just as the flowers bloom and the leaves change from green to gold, so too do the dynamics within the septet evolve as the year progresses. Relationships – both platonic and romantic – will be pushed to breaking point.
