modern love season 1 essays

Here's Where the Real People From Amazon's Modern Love Are Now

We tracked down the whereabouts of the new show's subjects.

Episode One: “When The Doorman is Your Main Man”

The first episode of the season follows book reviewer Maggie (played by Cristin Milioti) as she braves the New York dating scene and an unexpected pregnancy with the fierce support of what seems to be the only constant in her life: her doorman, Guzmin (real name Guzim). The story is based on the 2015 essay of writer Julie Margaret Hogben, who currently lives in Los Angeles with her twelve-year-old daughter, Isabel.

In a new interview with The New York Times , Hogben reveals that in actuality, the father of her child proposed to her after she revealed her pregnancy to him; she declined his proposal. She also explains that, unlike in the episode, she never debated whether or not to go through with the pregnancy.

Today, Hogben is still single, despite her daughter's earnest attempts to sign her up for dating apps. “She wants a distraction for me and she thinks I should get a life, which I should. So, yeah, I’ve got to get out there,” Hogben told The New York Times . She hasn’t been in a relationship since her daughter Isabel was born, which makes the closing scene of the episode, in which Guzim finally approves of the man Maggie brings from California to meet him, entirely fictional.

And yes, Guzim the doorman still holds his post on the Upper West Side, where Hogben pops in to visit him whenever she’s in town.

Episode Two: “When Cupid is a Prying Journalist”

Episode two recounts an interview that leads to both journalist Julie (played by Catherine Keener) and subject Joshua (Dev Patel) opening up about their romantic pasts, tracing not one but two gut-wrenching tales of lost love. The episode is based on author Deborah Copaken’s 2015 essay of the same name.

In reality, there was no job interview, whirlwind love-at-first-sight, or trip to the zoo for Joshua and his love interest. Nor was there an infidelity that caused their separation. The real Joshua, Hinge founder Justin McLeod, had actually met the love of his life, Kate, in college , where they dated off and on until graduation. Kate, however, was engaged to another man at the time of McLeod's interview with Copaken, and had not spoken to him in years.

The real-life Copaken was indeed heartbroken by the boy who never showed at her Paris flat, but their upstate rendezvous was imagined. It was Copaken who found him online by accident while doing research for a book she was writing, and they did meet up, albeit for lunch on a bench in Central Park. She in fact left her husband of 23 years while he stayed in his marriage, and the two still follow each other on social media, though they’re no longer in contact. Copaken is now in a happy relationship with a new man, who she met on Bumble, not Hinge, contrary to what her character reveals in the season finale.

However, Copaken's interview inspired McLeod to win Kate back in the wistful way the episode depicts. Kate left her fiance a month before their wedding (the invitations had been sent, the hall booked) after McLeod showed up on her doorstep in Zurich, eight years after they’d last seen each other. The two were married this year in Colorado, with Copaken in attendance.

Episode Three: “Take Me As I Am, Whoever I Am”

In Episode Three, Anne Hathaway dazzles as Lexi, an entertainment lawyer who’s been hiding her bipolar diagnosis from everyone in her life. This episode stays exceptionally true to many of the details in Terry Cheney’s 2008 essay , down to the trembling hand with which Lexi applies her mascara before her date. The only fictionalized aspect of the episode is the character of Lexi’s coworker, played by Quincy Tyler Bernstine, who becomes the first person to whom she discloses her diagnosis. In reality, Cheney never lost a job .

Today, Cheney is no longer practicing law. She has authored two books, including a New York Times -bestselling memoir entitled Manic , with another book slated to publish next fall. In terms of her love life, she says that the men she dates usually read her book first, as a sort of prerequisite. “I don’t know necessarily if I’m in a relationship. I do love. I am in love. So that’s great,” she told The New York Times .

Even though she still goes to the same grocery store, she never saw or heard from the real-life Jeff again.

Episode Four: “Rallying to Keep The Game Alive”

Tina Fey and John Slattery portray real-life couple Ann Leary and actor Denis Leary in episode four of the series, which follows their marriage as it teeters on the edge of divorce. The TV adaptation resembles Ann Leary’s 2013 essay quite closely; March of the Penguins is indeed the couple’s favorite movie .

What Leary didn’t mention in her piece, nor did the show explain, is that the couple’s therapist at the time didn’t think they had a bad marriage. “He pointed out that we would say things negative about each other, but if he said anything even slightly negative about either of us, we would jump to the other’s defense,” Leary told The New York Times in a new interview.

Ann and Denis Leary celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary this year, and they still play tennis.

Episode Five: “At The Hospital, An Interlude of Clarity”

In the fifth episode of Modern Love , Brian Gittis’s 2014 essay in which he severs a major blood vessel in his arm on a second date is brought to life by John Gallagher Jr. and Sofia Boutella.

Although the TV version leaves the fate of the lovers rather ambiguous as they doze off in the early morning light of the Elizabeth Street Garden, in Gittis’s essay, his date ends up back together with her ex-boyfriend about a month after their night in the E.R.

On the 2016 recording of the Modern Love podcast, Gittis says the woman featured in the piece really enjoyed the essay, and after it was published, they met up to talk about it over drinks. They ended up going on a few dates before their relationship fizzled out again.

Brian Gittis works in book publicity in New York, and he is now married with a one-year-old son.

Episode Six: “So He Looked Like Dad. It Was Just Dinner, Right?”

The sixth episode of the series features a young girl, Madeline (Julia Garner), who having lost her father goes searching for a paternal figure in an older coworker, Peter (Shea Whigman). He, on the other hand, is under the impression that their developing and ambiguous relationship is more than platonic.

The episode is based on writer Abby Sher’s 2006 essay , which features several specific details that the show did adapt, like the golf pattern on Peter’s socks and the creaminess of their shared risotto. However, Sher’s essay concludes after she goes over to the man’s house for dinner, as she realizes that the relationship isn’t going to give her what she needs. Amazon’s adaptation extends the tale (and the relationship) far beyond this night, shaping it into something more complicated and uncomfortable than what it is in Sher’s original piece. Sher, however, loved the episode, and feels that the fictionalized elements of the narrative were true to the sentiment of her experience.

“I am a huge fan of Audrey Wells and was so honored that she wrote the screenplay. I especially loved the MRI scene and I felt like Julia Garner and Shea Wigham completely understood and personified this complicated, yet really primal attraction,” she told Esquire in an email.

In actuality, Sher never saw the older man again outside of work after that first dinner. No stuffed seal at the Zoo, red coat, or sabbatical came of their initial date.

And as for how the piece has aged?

“I mean, I think daddy issues will always be a thing, right? I'm so grateful that Emmy Rossum directed this amazing cast so thoughtfully and stirred up so many emotions between the two main characters. There's no clear cut right or wrong in this scenario, as far as I can see,” Sher wrote.

Today, Sher is married to man whom she says is a wonderful father to their three children, and says she will always miss and adore her father.

Episode Seven: “Hers Was a World of One”

Episode seven is loosely adapted from author, sex columnist, and podcaster Dan Savage’s 2005 essay entitled “ DJ’s Homeless Mommy ,” in which he conveys the ups and downs of his and his husband’s open adoption experience. The episode is largely focused on the couple’s time hosting their future child’s homeless mother in their apartment, which was entirely imagined.

In the piece, Savage ruminates on the increasing difficulty of explaining to his small son, DJ, his mother’s complicated existence and long absences from his life, which we get a small sense of in the final bedtime story scene of the episode.

“The last time she visited, when DJ was 3, he wanted to know why his mother smelled so terrible. We were taken aback and answered without thinking it through. We explained that since she doesn’t have a home, she isn’t able to bathe often or wash her clothes. We realized we screwed up even before DJ started to freak. What could be more terrifying to a child than the idea of not having a home?” Savage writes in his essay.

The original piece is thought-provoking and in many ways more solemn than its TV adaptation. It details DJ’s mother’s battles with addiction and jail time, and it recounts Savage’s visceral fear that she was dead at various points over the years when she would drop out of contact.

While the episode draws inspiration from Savage’s piece, it also veers decisively away from his somber narrative. However, both the essay and the TV adaptation leave the fate of the adopted baby’s mother unknown.

“DJ's mom is alive and well. She's on her feet. She's housed. We talk on the phone occasionally. She and DJ speak on Mother's Day and on DJ's birthday. Things leveled out,” Savage told Gays With Kids in 2016.

Dan Savage and his husband Terry Miller live in Seattle, and their son DJ is now 21 years old.

Episode Eight: “The Race Grows Sweeter Near Its Final Lap”

Before it interweaves all the season’s characters together in a tacky montage of entirely implausible New York happenstance, the final episode of season one adapts author Eve Pell’s 2013 essay on the love she found later in life. Amazon’s version stays faithful to the real-life events of her relationship with her late husband, Sam, with whom she ran, traveled, and saw movies for the last several years of his life.

In an interview with NPR in early 2017, Pell explained that her distress after Sam’s passing led her to a bereavement group, where she met another man and fell in love again. However, Pell said she won’t be marrying again.

“I can't stand the idea of having four husbands. It's just too much,” she told NPR, laughing.

Modern Love is streaming now on Amazon Prime, and has officially been renewed for a Season Two coming in 2020.

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Modern Love Recap: The Good, the Bad and the Mad

This recap of Amazon Series Modern Love Season 1, Episode 3 , “Take Me as I Am, Whoever I Am” contains significant spoilers. You can read the recap of the previous episode by clicking these words.

If anything, what I’d like Episode 3 to do is to give anyone with bipolar disorder the confidence to speak openly about their condition. “Take Me As I Am, Whoever I Am” is a hard-hitting story about a woman called Lexi ( Anne Hathaway ) who suffers from bipolar, and the episode takes the audience through her highs and lows.

The start is entertaining but exemplifies someone who is peaking on their high. Lexi wears dazzling clothes to the supermarket to match how she feels, and the entire scene feels like  La La Land,  with dancers swooping around her. Of course, this isn’t  La La Land; the singing and dancing and the energetic narration is an indication of how she feels. Lexi feels f—ing fantastic, and she achieves so much in this positive window — even landing a handsome man named Jeff ( Gary Carr ) for a date.

Their official first date doesn’t go too well. Jeff rings Lexi from outside her house, but her high went to a deep low nights before, and she stayed in bed, consumed by darkness. She half-heartedly leaves her bed to go on the date, which is a disaster, and with Jeff not knowing the reality of Lexi’s situation, he assumes she felt obliged to go on a date.

Work is tough for Lexi too — with 50% of her days on highs, and the other 50% on lows, the HR department has already picked up on her poor attendance. Her manager likes her, which makes the situation harder.

And then the next day, Lexi is feeling high again, instantly ringing Jeff to make amends and secure that second date. She agrees for it to be at her house, and she will cook. After spending an entire day cooking and cleaning, as Jeff arrives and presses the buzzer, darkness looms around Lexi again, and she slumps to the bathroom floor unable to move. This scene was horrific to watch, as she begs her inner self not to jump into a low, talking to herself in the mirror.

There is a salient message in Episode 3, “Take Me as I Am, Whoever I Am”, which comes in the form of Lexi’s manager. After getting fired, Lexi joins her manager for a coffee at a cafe. Here, Lexi breaks down and finally confides in someone — she tells her now ex-manager that she had bipolar disorder, and describes how the highs and lows impact her life.

This is a hard-hitting scene, as Lexi is reaching an end to one of her lows to show real sadness. Lexi realizes at this moment that giving people the chance to know her truly, to be completely open about her disorder, will help her maintain relationships, rather than easily discard them and lose countless jobs. Lexi gained a friend in the cafe, and from here, she was able to be assigned a prescription that helps settle her disorder and be back on the dating scene.

Modern Love Season 1, Episode 3, “Take Me as I Am, Whoever I Am” is incredible television, and shows off Anne Hathaway’s range — when she is at her best, her performances are unbeatable. I hope this episode does as intended, and gives inspiration and hope to those with bipolar disorder.

You can read the recap of the fourth episode by clicking these words

Article by Daniel Hart

Daniel is the co-founder of Ready Steady Cut and has served as Editor-in-Chief since 2017. Since then, Dan has been at the top of his game by ensuring that we only produce and upload content of exceptional quality and that we’re up to date with the latest additions to the streaming and entertainment world.

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How Amazon Picked Which ‘Modern Love’ Essays to Translate to the Screen

Where to Stream:

• Modern Love

Amazon’s Modern Love is a cynic’s nightmare. Obscenely earnest, sweetly vulnerable, and unabashed in its optimism, the star-studded anthology series is out to prove there’s a whole lot of love in the world.

Each episode of Modern Love is a dramatization of one of the hundreds of essays that The New York Times editor Daniel Jones has selected for the popular column of the same name. “What makes a good column is a combination of vulnerability and intelligence. And those are kind of at odds in a way because when someone is really vulnerable it seems like they’re out of control and they’re not smart in a way,” Jones said to Decider following Modern Love ‘s panel at Summer TCA . “But being able to go through something that makes you vulnerable and come to an understanding and some sort of wisdom, that’s the tightrope you need to walk to do that kind of writing well.”

As the mastermind behind the column’s appeal, Jones was brought on as a consultant for Amazon’s adaptation of the column. He explained that he didn’t see much difference between an essay that worked well on the page and one that was perfect for adaptation, noting that’s how Modern Love ‘s producers approached their decisions. “They’re looking for stories that have real vulnerability, but it’s done in a smart way. It’s not simplified and it’s not exploited,” Jones said.

Shepherding Modern Love ‘s translation to the screen is showrunner John Carney. Jones praised Carney and said the Once and Sing Street director was “not afraid of being earnest.”

Cristin Milioti stars in the first episode of Modern Love , “When the Doorman is Your Main Man,” as a young woman who finds more solace in a friendship with her doorman than with her potential suitors. Milioti ironically starred in the Broadway adaptation of Carney’s Once , and she agreed with Jones’s take on why Carney was perfect for Modern Love.

“I think what I love about John [Carney] is that he’s really comfortable in the uncomfortable, and I think that’s where the best stories come from,” Milioti told Decider. “He wants to delve deep. He wants to be like, ‘Yeah, let’s get into the stuff that’s grey. Let’s get into the nuance. Let’s not just package it.'”

“I love the phone conversations I have with [Carney] when he talks about how he thinks about this on a deeper level and how a show like this can have a positive impact on a world that just feels meaner by the day,” Jones said. “How returning to this kind of basic human one-on-one relationship, the dignity of that, is a positive force in the world today.”

Actor Gary Carr plays a handsome man who falls in a flirtation with Anne Hathaway’s character in the third episode of Modern Love , “Take Me as I Am, Whoever I Am.” Carr admitted to being a huge fan of Hathaway’s going back to The Princess Diaries — “ I wasn’t going to say it ,” he joked. But he was also hyped to work on a project that amplified that spirit of “love.”

“I feel like there is a lot of love in the world. I see it everywhere, all the time. It’s just not reported all the time,” Carr said.

“Anything that makes people open their heart and feel less alone, or like makes them want to reach out and have a connection to someone regardless of outcome is incredible,” Milioti said.

Stream It Or Skip It: 'At The Moment' On Netflix, An Anthology Series About Love During The Pandemic

Woman crush wednesday: look out for lucy boynton in 'the pale blue eye', stream it or skip it: 'little america' season 2 on apple tv+, with more heartwarming stories about the immigrant experience in america, stream it or skip it: 'modern love: tokyo' on prime video, the tv show inspired by the new york times column goes to japan.

Jones teased that there have already been conversations about which essays have the potential to work for a Season Two, but right now he’s more focused on managing the massive inbox of submissions he gets for the column. And yes, he’s worried that Modern Love might cause a tsunami of submissions if it becomes ultra-successful.

“My main concern is volume, an increase in volume that’s unmanageable,” Jones said. “There’s always something about the column that people think, ‘I could do that,’ when in fact it’s really hard to do.”

Even if Jones is concerned that there might be too many submissions for Modern Love , Carr sees the silver lining in Jones’s problem. “That’s good,” Carr said. “That goes to show that the amount of essays he receives, that’s a great example on its own of how much love there is in the world.”

Modern Love premieres on Prime Video on Friday, October 18.

Where to stream Modern Love

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As a self-professed mega-fan of rom-com novels and films, I was thrilled when Amazon announced their upcoming Modern Love TV series , based on the long-running New York Times Modern Love column . Premiering on Oct. 18, the series boasts a star-studded cast (Anne Hathaway, Tina Fey, Dev Patel and Andrew Scott are just four of the show's featured actors) and will feature eight anthology-style episodes about love in all of its many forms — romantic, familial, platonic, sexual, and for oneself. Whether you're a long-time reader of Modern Love or are just discovering the column, now is the perfect time to catch up on some of the greatest essays before the show premieres.

In the revised and updated version of the Modern Love book (first published in 2007) editor Daniel Jones compiled 42 of the columns best essays. In his introduction to the book, Jones writes:

"I suppose if we are going to try to define what a love story is, we should begin by defining what love is, but that can be even more slippery. Our definitions of love, too, tend toward the flowery treatment. From where I sit, however -- as someone who has read, skimmed, or otherwise digested some one hundred thousand love stories over the past fifteen years -- love, at its best, is more of a wheelbarrow than a rose: gritty, and messy but also durable. Yet still hard to put into words."

Below are seven of my favorite of the 42 essays that appear in the Modern Love book, a great refresher for seasoned readers and a perfect precursor to the series for new fans, too:

'You Might Want to Marry My Husband' by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

In this March 2017 column (published just 10 days before she died of ovarian cancer at age 51) author Amy Krouse Rosenthal wrote a moving letter to her husband, Jason Rosenthal, in the hopes of finding him a new partner:

"Here is the kind of man Jason is: He showed up at our first pregnancy ultrasound with flowers. This is a man, who, because he is always up early, surprises me every Sunday morning by making some kind of oddball smiley face out of items near the coffee pot: a spoon, a mug, a banana. This is a main who emerges from the minimart or gas station and says, 'Give me your palm.' And voila, a colorful gum ball appears. (He knows I love all the flavors but white.) My guess is you know enough about him now. So let's swipe right."

Read "You Might Want To Marry My Husband."

'The Race Grows Sweeter Near Its Final Lap' by Eve Pell

Although Eve Pell's Jan. 2013 essay has not been officially confirmed as part of the Modern Love series, clues from the trailer highly suggest its inclusion. In it, Pell wrote of her late-in-life marriage to a Japanese American widower named Sam:

"Old love is different. In our 70s and 80s, we had been through enough of life’s ups and downs to know who we were, and we had learned to compromise. We knew something about death because we had seen loved ones die. The finish line was drawing closer. Why not have one last blossoming of the heart?"

Read "The Race Grows Sweeter In Its Final Lap."

'When Eve and Eve Bit the Apple' by Kristen Scharold

In this Nov. 2016 essay, writer Kristen Scharold wrote about coming out as queer and leaving her Evangelical church when she meets and falls in love with a woman named Jess:

"I felt my cramped religious framework of false dichotomies and moral starkness beginning to collapse. What once seemed like a bleak choice between losing my soul or losing my most cherished friend was in fact a lesson that true love is the only thing that could save me."

Read "When Eve and Eve Bit The Apple."

'When the Doorman is Your Main Man' by Julie Margaret Hogben

Hogben's Oct. 2015 essay (also seemingly included in the Modern Love series trailer) focused on the unique friendship she shares with her doorman, Guzim, and how his support helped her embark on the journey of single motherhood with courage:

"I became fodder for gossip: Who was the father? Did I dump him, or did he dump me? Valid questions, sometimes asked to my face, sometimes not. But down in the lobby, Guzim was there with no dog in the race. I wasn’t his daughter, sister or ex. I wasn’t his employee or boss. Our social circles didn’t overlap. Six days a week, he stood downstairs, detached but also caring enough to be the perfect friend, neither worried nor pitying."

Read "When The Doorman Is Your Main Man."

'Rallying to Keep the Game Alive' by Ann Leary

Leary's Sept. 2013 essay about the almost-end and subsequent reunification of her marriage to actor Denis Leary is a moving look at a modern marriage (and another essay that, though currently unconfirmed, also seems to be included in the Modern Love trailer.) She wrote:

"When we met, I was 20, he 25. We were too young and inexperienced to know that people don’t change who they are, only how they play and work with others. Our basic problem was, and is, that we are almost identical — in looks, attitudes and psychological makeup. Two Leos who love children and animals, and are intensely emotional and highly sensitive and competitive with everybody, but especially with each other."

Read "Rallying To Keep The Game Alive."

'Now I Need a Place to Hide Away' by Ann Hood

In her Feb. 2017 column, author Ann Hood wrote about The Beatles fandom she shared with her young daughter, Grace, who died suddenly of complications from a virulent form of strep when she was just five years old:

"It is difficult to hide from the Beatles. After all these years they are still regularly in the news. Their songs play on oldies stations, countdowns and best-ofs. There is always some Beatles anniversary: the first No. 1 song, the first time in the United States, a birthday, an anniversary, a milestone, a Broadway show. But hide from the Beatles I must. Or, in some cases, escape."

Read "Now I Need A Place To Hide Away."

'Take Me As I Am, Whoever I Am' by Terri Cheney

Terri Cheney's Jan. 2008 essay, which has been confirmed as the inspiration behind the episode of the Modern Love series starring Anne Hathaway, is about the author's experience with rapid-cycling bipolar disorder and how it affected her dating life. Cheney wrote:

"In love there’s no hiding: You have to let someone know who you are, but I didn’t have a clue who I was from one moment to the next. When dating me, you might go to bed with Madame Bovary and wake up with Hester Prynne. Worst of all, my manic, charming self was constantly putting me into situations that my down self couldn’t handle."

Read "Take Me As I Am, Whoever I Am."

This article was originally published on Sep. 12, 2019

Screen Rant

Modern love: best moments from each season 1 episode, ranked.

Modern Love tells 8 love stories based on real events. Here are the best moments from every episode in season one, ranked.

Modern Love is adapted from the Time's Styles section essay column by the same same. It is a quasi-fictional show that tells eight different tales of various kinds of people. It talks about various variations of love paternal love, self-love, the love shared between family members, young love, and old love.

RELATED:  10 Truest Quotes From Modern Love

Each story is fantastic in their own ways. Here they are, the best moments from each episode, ranked.

At the Hospital, an Interlude of Clarity: The Park Scene

The prelude to "At the Hospital, an Interlude of Clarity" is provided in the finale episode of Modern Love . It starts with a sudden summer storm in New York. John Gallagher Jr.'s Rob stands outside the restaurant he's been stood up at. Sofia Boutella's Yasmine takes cover at the very same place. "Life gives you another chance," proclaims Sofia and asks Rob out on a date.

The actual episode is a second-date story where Rob accidentally cuts himself and Sofia spends the night at the hospital with him. Very quickly she discovers Rob's medical history, in a way that's almost unnerving.

The ending stands out, for it is a  Notting Hill -esque park scene. The two are polar opposites, he almost can't function in social situations owing to his anxiety and she live-blogs every event on social media. What matters is that they have accepted each other for who they really are.

Rallying to Keep the Game Alive: The Epiphany

Tina Fey and John Slattery star as a middle-aged couple in "Rallying to Keep the Game Alive". They stay together for the sake of their kids. Tina Fey's Sarah rants about how tired and unhappy she's in their marriage. Her husband, Dennis, is an actor, who's emotionally absent from their marriage, and mostly from the family life. When he is around, only his kids have his attention.

Their therapist suggests that they do something together as a couple, find common ground, a hobby. And that's when they start playing tennis. But it is only the heart to heart conversation as a couple that acts as a catalyst to their romance. She admits that she has been an adult in their relationship, a role she's tired of playing. Dennis slowly pushed her out of his life and that is why they are where they are today. Finally finding a common ground starts with Dennis's apology and acceptance from Sarah.

So He Looked Like Dad. It Was Just Dinner Right: Peter Does the Right Thing

Julia Garner's Madeline is a young adult who's spent her years without fatherly love. So she craves for it. The more Madeline craves for it, the more she looks it in for odd places. At her friend's 21st birthday party, she looks at her dad as if he's talking to her.

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Finally, Madeline gets a dad-crush on her boss Shea Whigham's Peter. She fixates on him and begins to take note of his fatherly characteristics: crumbs on his sweater, little flecks of silver on his sideburns, his smell. Knowingly, or unknowingly (best left to individual judgment), Madeline leads him on.

The end of the episode is affecting. Teary-eyed, Peter tells her he's leaving work. Peter walks off telling her she's the daughter of any father's dreams. And that's all that Madeline really wanted.

Take Me As I Am, Whoever I Am: Lexi Accepts Herself

"Take Me Me As I Am, Whoever I Am" is the closest thing to a La La Land . Anne Hathaway plays Lexi, an entertainment lawyer by the day. The episode begins with her filling out her bio on a dating website. Soon, she's got herself a date with the supermarket guy and she's excited about it. The first odd thing you hear about her is that she's missed work. The next thing you see a montage of how her depression set in. Lexi has lived only half of her life, the rest of it, she's spent hiding and sleeping in bed. She's lost out on her date (Gary Carr's Jeff) and her job. The show couldn't have explained it better.

But confiding in a co-worker about her situation liberates her. She finally accepts herself for who is she, saying, "I felt almost proud of my condition." Lexi rings colleagues, old boyfriends to provide an explanation for her past behavior. Lexi ends on the note of self-love and acceptance of who you really are.

When the Doorman Is Your Main Man: Guzmin's Approval

Christin Milioti and Laurentiu Possa have incredible tenant-doorman chemistry in "When The Doorman Is Your Main Man". She has a tendency to date the wrong kind of guys while he vets them for her. Maggie doesn't agree with what Guzmin has to say, but she does seek him out continually.

Guzmin's love for Maggie is thoroughly paternal, he watches over her, lends her advice when she gets pregnant accidentally. Guzmin establishes a beautiful form of paternal love between him and Maggie, by challenging various stereotypes about single-motherhood, pro-choice arguments, new age romance. The moment is stellar when they reunite years later and Guzmin approves of Maggie's new boyfriend.

When Cupid Is a Prying Journalist: Julie Learns Why She Was Stood Up

Catherine Keener's Julie wins hearts in "When Cupid Is a Prying Journalist". The story begins with The Times's Julie doing a profile on Joshua (Dev Patel), the CEO of a dating app named, Fuse. Julie and Joshua get to casually talking about dating and love, at the end of which she pries on his love-sickness.

Totally, off the record, Joshua narrates the story of how he and Emma split up. She'd almost cheated on him, he broke it off. Two years later, he still wanted her, only she was engaged. Emma gets hold of Julie's profile on Joshua, calls him up and the two of them begin dating again.

Julie tells Joshua about her own untested love, the young man she'd met in Paris 17 years ago, the man who'd stood her up.

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As fate would have it, she meets this man who tells him he'd lost the book she'd written her address on. We get one night of the two of them out together. Julie's narration of the following words is heartwarming:

"The love we had in our past, unfinished, untested, lost love seems so easy, so childish to those of us who choose to settle down. But actually, it's the purest, most concentrated stuff."

Hers Was a World of One: The Confrontation

"Hers Was a World of One", talks about a couple, Andrew Scott (Tobin) and Brandon Kyle Goodman (Andy) who share a strong paternal instinct to have a baby. They settle on open-adoption as means. Olivia Cooke (Karla) is the woman who provides them their baby. They learn that Karla is a free spirit in every sense of the word: she travels throughout the year, doesn't believe in permanent settlement, or things, that according to her, make human beings inhuman.

In her third trimester, Karla comes to live in with Tobin and Andy. It is here that the impending Tobin versus Karla happens, and it's worth every penny. She calls him a hipster-liberal who just claims things he doesn't do. He tells her she's insignificant, a world of one. Tobin and Andy are blessed with a baby girl, whom Karla sees on occasion.

The Race Grows Sweeter Near Its Final Lap: Margot's Eulogy

"The Race Grows Sweeter Near Its Final Lap" is creatively brilliant. Jane Alexander plays a grieving widow named Margot. She's lost the love of her later life, Ken to old age. This installment talks about old love and draws similarities with young love.

Margot's eulogy is an outstanding part of the episode. She makes a strong case for how similar love of all ages is. She acknowledges, as an old couple in love, they did all the things that young people do. At the end of this funeral, Margot decides to go for a walk all by herself in a New York summer storm. That point is the beginning, the mid, and the end of some of the stories in the anthology series.

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Modern Love

TV series based on the New York Times column that explores relationships, love, and the human connection. TV series based on the New York Times column that explores relationships, love, and the human connection. TV series based on the New York Times column that explores relationships, love, and the human connection.

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• Lovin Dublin

07th Nov 2019

I’ve ranked every Modern Love episode from best to worst for your viewing pleasure

Denise Curtin

Modern Love has landed on Amazon Prime and if you haven’t yet, it’s a must.

The anticipated first series dropped all 8 episodes on the streaming service late last month and so far, viewers are loving it.

Modern Love is based on essays written by people for the New York Times. Tales of love, loss, heartache, second chances, and accidental encounters.

Each episode is based loosely around one essay with a different cast starring in each story.

All the episodes, similar to all the essays are based in New York and are approximately 30 minutes making it seriously easy (too easy!) to binge-watch the series in one night.

From Tina Fey to Anne Hataway, the cast doesn’t disappoint but if you want to sample the fruits of their latest work for yourself, I suggest you watch them in this order.

1. Episode 1 – When the Doorman Is Your Main Man

I’ve watched this specific episode three times and each time I love it a little more. Unlike other episodes, this one isn’t based on the typical kind of love between a couple but more so on an unsung friendship between a woman and her doorman, Guzmin. Starring Cristin Milioti and Laurentiu Possa, we promise you’ll be reduced to tears in the best way possible.

2. Episode 7 – Hers Was a World of One

A gay couple decides to take the next step in their relationship by planning to adopt a baby. However, the road to the baby’s arrival isn’t easy – full of unexpected turns that lead to them realising they wouldn’t have it any other way.

Spoiler – this episode stars a cameo appearance from Ed Sheeran.

3. Episode 3 – Take Me As I Am, Whoever I Am

Anne Hathaway, in my opinion, gives one of her best performances in this short but beautifully created episode. It explores mental illness and Bipolar Disorder by taking you on the difficult journey of dating as someone suffering from the disease. Using dexterity and care, this episode gives you as much as it can in 30 minutes.

4. Episode 2 – When Cupid is a Prying Journalist

I loved this essay and so, I was happy to see the episode do it justice.

“Have you ever been in love?” the question which takes you through two different tales of love, all spurred from an interview between a hot-shot CEO and a journalist. Dev Patel and Catherine Keener are the unlikely duo I want to see more of.

Plus, as everyone is saying on Twitter, we need more of Dev Patel in rom-coms, please.

5. Episode 4 – Rallying to Keep the Game Alive

Oh, Tina Fey, you can do no wrong. I don’t know would I have liked this episode as much if she didn’t star in it. Based around a couple who feel they’ve lost the spark, the conversation and the love in their relationship when it’s not about their kids, it follows them as they try to reconnect. Not a bad episode, not the greatest either, the ending jumps forward quite quickly.

6. Episode 5- At the Hospital, an Interlude of Clarity

I liked the overall idea of this story, the atmosphere they created for a stellar love tale but, I found it kind of fell short. Although it made me laugh at times, I lost interest in parts which isn’t great given its only 32 minutes long.

I think the cast was also wrong here, Sofia Boutella – not my choice.

7. Episode 6 – So He Looked Like My Dad. It was just Dinner, Right?

If this episode was to make the viewer feel uncomfortable, it succeed in that. Like, honestly, all I kept thinking was “there were so many better essays you could have picked why Amazon, why?”

Following a young woman who becomes emotionally involved with her boss – he thinks it’s a relationship, she sees him as the dad she’s always yearned for, wires get crossed and yeah, it’s the only episode that left me disappointed.

8. Episode 8 – The Race Grows Sweeter Near its Final Lap

I LOVED this beautiful episode but, I had to leave it until last because, in a Love Actually-esque moment, it shows all the previous episodes interlocking to make it appear like one day in New York.

There’s a brief tale about the power of falling in love no matter what age you are at the beginning before all the episodes come together to show you how love stories are being created every single day all around us.

All in all, as the hopeless romantic I am, Modern Love has me yearning for a second series, there are so many more essays I want to see brought to life and there’s so much more to tell.

If you’re looking for something to watch this weekend be it alone, with the girls or your lover, throw this on the box.

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10 Facts About Amazon's Modern Love

By escher walcott | feb 17, 2021.

Amazon's anthology series Modern Love became a critical hit upon its release in the fall of 2019 and continues to be discovered and enjoyed by new viewers, as they await its second season. Based on the popular The New York Times column of the same name, the series tells tales of love in various forms through the depiction of contemporary, and sometimes unconventional, relationships.

Each standalone episode presents a unique story full of layered characters played expertly by some of today's most accomplished actors, including Oscar winner Anne Hathaway, Academy Award nominees Dev Patel and Catherine Keener, two-time Golden Globe winner Tina Fey, and Golden Globe nominee Andrew Scott. Here are some facts about the series' literary origins and its acclaimed first season.

1. The New York Times column upon which Modern Love is based on has been running since 2004.

The New York Times 's "Modern Love" column came about after husband and wife writers Daniel Jones and Cathi Hanauer each wrote their own books about the challenges of balancing life, work, and family obligations. Hanauer's book, The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage , was published in 2002; in 2004, Jones wrote a companion title: The Bastard on the Couch: 27 Men Try Really Hard to Explain Their Feelings About Love, Loss, Fatherhood, and Freedom .

After The New York Times wrote a story about the couple, they received a call from Trip Gabriel, one of the paper's editors, asking if they'd be interested in working on a new column that would allow others to share their own unique "love" stories. Together, they commissioned and edited the first batch of "Modern Love" essays. However, due to her novel writing obligations, Hanauer could not commit to the project full-time, so Jones became the column's main editor, and still works in that capacity today.

2. The "Modern Love" column receives more than 9000 submissions each year.

As the popularity of the column grew, so too did the number of submissions. Stories can be submitted as either longform essays (running about 1500 words) or as a shortform "Tiny Love Story" (which runs approximately 100 words), and all recollections must be completely true with no fictional characters or names. (You can read more about how to sumit your own "Modern Love" story here .)

Jones curates a selection of essays from the thousands he receives and looks for a mix of unique and impactful stories. “The essays that stick with me are the ones that are instructive about relationships in ways I haven’t heard before," Jones told Oprah Magazine in 2019. “Finding a new voice and a new perspective is always energizing and fun.”

3. The "Modern Love" column has led to a number of book deals for its writers.

Getting published in the "Modern Love" section of The New York Times has been a springboard for many writers. Jones estimates that the column has led to approximately 50 to 60 book deals. “One of the reasons the column has a large readership in the publishing world is because we showcase the work of so many unknown writers who are telling their most important story,” Jones Jtold Literary Hub in 2019.

Significant books that were born out of "Modern Love" essays include The Thirteenth Horse Won by Ellen Graf, about marrying a stranger, and The Slippery Year: A Meditation on Happily Ever After by Melanie Gideon, about a woman rediscovering life at the age of 43.

4. Amazon’s Modern Love anthology series is based on real "Modern Love" essays.

Running at approximately 30 minutes per episode, each episode of Modern Love is a standalone story based on an essay published in the "Modern Love" column, though some of the details have been altered. Series creator John Carney—the writer/director behind Once and Sing Street —had the challenging task of selecting which of the column's many essays would be ripe for filming, which meant that they needed to be able to live off the page and resonate with viewers.

5. The original essay writers were not involved in adapting their stories for a very good reason.

Although the writers of the original essays were compensated for the use of their work and allowed to give approval of the final episodes before airing, they were not involved in the actual adaptation process—and for a very sensible reason. In a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter , Carney explained that while he wanted the writers' final approval on the finished episode, he didn't want them involved in the creative process so that the series did not "get bogged down in memoir or biography."

6. Modern Love star Catherine Keener may have broken the rule when it came to keeping the original essay writers uninvolved in production.

While Carney preferred to keep the original writers separate from the production process, Catherine Keener—who starred opposite in Dev Patel in "When Cupid Is a Prying Journalist," one of the series' most critically acclaimed installments (it earned Patel an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series)—couldn't help but break that rule in order to give the most authentic performance she could. Deborah Copaken, who wrote the essay the episode is based on but wasn't even allowed to read the script, told Salon about how she met with Keener ahead of filming.

"Catherine Keener sent me an email, using her secret email address, saying, 'I'm playing you, but I'm not allowed to tell you this, and I'm not allowed to meet with you. But how am I going to play you if I have never met you? Can you please meet for lunch?'" Copaken explained. "So, we sort of secretly met. I told Dan Jones afterwards, 'Hey, I met with Catherine Keener.' He told me, 'Wait, you're not supposed to.' I was like, 'Well, we did.' We ended up meeting for lunch at Odeon for four hours. We just sat there and chatted and chatted and chatted. And like moms with kids at the same college, we talked about that. It wasn't necessarily talking about the story itself. We were just talking about who we were in our lives."

7. New York City is its own character on Modern Love .

Each episode of Modern Love was filmed in New York City, providing the focal backdrop to each love story. This was done in homage to The New York Times column and the essayists featured who reside in the city. Much like the human characters portrayed on the show, who are tied to each other through love and other feelings, New York City and the people and places that make it so vibrant are also part of each story.

8. One episode of Modern Love handles mental illness in a uniquely creative and sensitive way.

"Take Me as I Am, Whoever I Am," the third episode in the first season of Modern Love , depicts what life is like being bipolar and the effect this has on one's personal relationships. The episode—which is shown through the lens of a character named Lexi, played by Anne Hathaway, as she grapples with the disorder—received particular praise for its heartbreaking, personal approach to showcasing mental illness yet managing to finish the episode with a surprisingly uplifting ending.

9. Modern Love isn’t afraid to tackle controversial issues.

The most controversial episode of Modern Love 's first season is undoubtedly "So He Looked Like Dad, It Was Just Dinner, Right?" The episode stars Ozark 's Julia Garner as Maddy, a young woman enthralled by her much older colleague Peter, played by Boardwalk Empire 's Shea Wigham. Maddy confuses her feelings for him as romantic when, really, she is simply yearning for a father figure in her life—giving way to the age-old “Daddy Issues” complex. As a result, the episode is filled with awkward and disturbing exchanges between the pair that border on inappropriate as themes of parental replacement are explored.

10. While waiting for a second season, there’s also a Modern Love podcast you can enjoy.

In addition to books and a TV show, the "Modern Love" column launched a podcast in 2016 which can be enjoyed while waiting for the show's second season (which has already been confirmed ). The podcast is narrated by an impressive host of actors, including Jake Gyllenhaal, Issa Rae , and Brian Cox. Even so, Jones was initially surprised by the impact this medium has in retelling these stories. “It’s just a much more direct and sort of intimate experience," he told Oprah Magazine. "And that has proved to be true with the television show too.”

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"Just you and me Through the wind and hail Setting sail into the world" — "Setting Sail", Gary Clark

Modern Love is a 2019 Romantic Comedy Anthology on Amazon Prime , adapted for television by John Carney from essays in the "Modern Love" column of the New York Times. Boasting a star-studded cast, including the likes of Anne Hathaway , Tina Fey , John Slattery , Dev Patel , Cristin Milioti , Olivia Cooke , Andrew Scott , Sofia Boutella , and John Gallagher Jr. , the series explores many forms of love through various stories set in New York City.

The show premiered on October 18, 2019. On October 24, 2019, the series was renewed for a second season, which premiered on August 13, 2021.

Tropes that apply to the entire series:

• Based on a True Story : The episodes are fictional retellings of essays in the New York Times.
• Big Applesauce : Each episode of the first season (and half of the second season) explores a type of love in New York City.
• Genre Anthology : Explores different types of love in the modern day. The episodes are standalone except for a short segment in the first season finale.
• One Degree of Separation : Downplayed, but in the first season finale many of the characters pass each other on the street.
• One-Steve Limit : Averted, both Maggie's daughter in "When the Doorman is Your Main Man" and the protagonist of "Rallying to Keep the Game Alive" are named Sarah.
• Romantic Comedy : Many of the stories are lighthearted and focus on romance.
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Modern Love: Season 1 Reviews

For every episode that gives you good ol' lurrve on a platter — there's an episode that explores the breakdown of a relationship and the complexity of ordinary life.

Full Review | Oct 9, 2023

For the most part though, Modern Love is an uplifting experience with more than enough 'aww' moments to keep you ploughing on through all eight episodes...

Full Review | Jul 14, 2021

[An] exquisite series. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jan 21, 2020

I found myself cheering each set of lovers on, hoping they could work it out. Watching it with my husband I felt a warm buzz of happiness at the end of each episode -- and there aren't many shows you can say that about.

Full Review | Jan 17, 2020

Modern Love is an anthology series that is unfortunately a mixed bag. It has episodes that show its true potential fulfilled, but there aren't enough of them to warrant a full recommendation.

Full Review | Dec 27, 2019

A stellar cast of actors and well-known writers work hard, but only a couple of the episodes are exceptional. Still, at 31 minutes long, it can be a nice break from the world's insanity.

Full Review | Dec 6, 2019

The series is worthy because of the exercise of transferring the real stories of the readers from the paper to the screen, giving life to those stories in fiction. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Dec 4, 2019

What saves it from being overly saccharine is that the stories are real, and not every one wraps up tidily.

Modern Love, the short story series, is successful not because it operates with the same tools of a rom-com-but because these are real romances told by real people.

Modern Love really feels like it would have benefited from less tidiness, less ponderousness - maybe even, dare I say, a little less New York Times-iness.

It was a brilliant move to adapt those slice of life dramas from the Times. Now, it's just a matter of time before aspiring writers use the column as their conduit to Hollywood.

It's a pro job, though at times it feels professional in a Madison Avenue kind of way, as if you are being sold something, rather than told a story.

With an ensemble that also includes Tina Fey, Andrew Scott, and Julia Garner, the show feels like something of a missed opportunity.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 4, 2019

The first three and last two episodes of Modern Love make for passable fluffy entertainment. The middle two are entirely skippable, and watch the dad episode at your own risk.

Full Review | Nov 29, 2019

The show is uneven but well worth a look.

Full Review | Nov 15, 2019

What does it tell us about love and New Yorkers? That there is no amount of money Amazon won't throw in order to bring some synthetic sub-Nora Ephron/Woody Allen cutesy-cute blah to its offering.

Full Review | Nov 14, 2019

Real life-based romance series both charms and annoys.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 24, 2019

Modern Love, I guess, is the version for those who think smoking pot is naughty? Those people are mostly bores; perhaps appropriately, this show is about mostly boring people.

Full Review | Oct 24, 2019

Modern Love had the chance to build upon the Times' original essays, but to its detriment, the show adapted them as faithfully as possible, yielding mostly dull interpretations.

Full Review | Oct 23, 2019

Modern Love is at once empty and retrograde. Its stars, and viewers, deserve better.

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Modern Love Has Nothing New to Say About Modern Love

Amazon’s anthology series based on the popular New York Times column flattens the collection of stories with trite idealism.

Most of the eight episodes of Amazon’s anthology series Modern Love , based on the New York Times column of the same name, examine romantic love at different stages: the start of a relationship, the middle of a long and turbulent marriage, the aftermath of missing the one who got away. Several episodes explore platonic love, and a few toe the line between friendship and romance. One, about a woman with bipolar disorder, even explores self-love.

In the final episode, these New York City–set stories receive a coda in the form of an extended montage in which all of the characters’ lives intersect. As a thunderstorm rolls in, Margot (played by Jane Alexander), a widow from earlier in the finale, jogs past a Volkswagen van transporting Karla (Olivia Cooke), a pregnant homeless woman from the previous episode. The same van drives past other characters (a woman and her doorman from the first episode), who then walk past another (the CEO of a dating app, from Episode 2), who sprints past others (the couple from Episode 5), and so on, implying that although the people in Modern Love ’s separate stories may be strangers to one another, they’re all connected.

It’s a cute trick, pulled off by body doubles and clever staging. But as a closing meant to tie the show together, the episode fails to deliver any significant conclusions about the nature of love. Instead, by summarizing the tales in one orderly sequence, the finale flattens its eight stories into a bunch of clichés. No matter how the characters’ respective episodes wrapped up, they all get polished, happy endings in the montage: A married couple in therapy (played by Tina Fey and John Slattery), who came close to separating, continue playing tennis, their newfound hobby, in the rain. Have they repaired their relationship further, or are they just enjoying the game? A young woman (Julia Garner) who began a confused relationship with an older man (Shea Whigham) is seen embracing a man closer to her age. Is this unnamed stranger a new boyfriend she met after the events of her episode? Are they on their first date, or their fifth? Modern Love doesn’t care to explain; the camera pans up away from Garner’s character and her beau to glimpse Alexander’s Margot strolling across a bridge above their heads, ending the season.

The montage is a cacophony of elements in search of a point—a finale that has nothing to say. It’s a missed opportunity: Given the richness of Modern Love ’s source material, plucked from hundreds of real-life tales about the messy, enlightening nature of love, it’s all the more frustrating that the series concludes with the shallow message that love simply … exists. (In New York’s most affluent neighborhoods anyway.)

Modern Love had the chance to build upon the Times’ original essays, but to its detriment, the show adapted them as faithfully as possible, yielding mostly dull interpretations. In the episode starring Fey and Slattery, the original columnist, Ann Leary, had viewed her and her husband’s tennis playing as a metaphor for the way they could continue to make their marriage work. “It occurred to me there was some sort of grace in my husband’s form,” she wrote , “and I felt it in mine, too, as we both worked to keep the game alive just a little longer, by trying to find each other’s sweet spot, by playing, for once, to the other’s advantage.” The show doesn’t capture that mix of relief and desperation in a marriage finally finding a way forward; as pleasant as it is to see Fey’s and Slattery’s characters continue to rally in the rain during the ending montage, there’s none of the “grace” Leary described. Here, tennis merely becomes a new activity.

Even when a column does get capably remixed for the screen , the tidy montage renders an unimaginative ending. In the episode featuring Anne Hathaway as Lexi, an entertainment lawyer with bipolar disorder, the writer-director John Carney illustrates Lexi’s state of mind through a bunch of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend– like set pieces (Lexi imagines herself in a musical). The installment is one of the series’ more creative endeavors. But in the finale, rather than delving further into the thorny territory of how a mental illness can affect romantic relationships, Lexi is shown wiping away a tear while riding her bike, and later smiling serenely at a bar with a friend. These wordless glimpses telegraph too little about her life. Without more context, they’re not just ambiguous; they’re useless.

The most egregious conclusion within the montage is a prequel to the events of Episode 5. In that installment, a couple (played by Sofia Boutella and John Gallagher Jr.) on their second date end up in the ER when Gallagher Jr.’s Rob accidentally slices his bicep on broken glass. The original essay, by the writer Brian Gittis, used the anecdote to discuss how an abnormal situation forced him to be himself around a woman he’d been nervous about.

Despite the extraordinary circumstances of the date, Gittis wrapped up his essay solemnly : “I would like to be able to say my story ends in an epiphany, with the end of my anxiety and the beginning of an enduring relationship. But the reality is she left me about a month later. Not because she had found me repulsive in the fluorescent light of the hospital, but for a more conventional reason: She missed her ex-boyfriend.” Modern Love doesn’t explore this bittersweet conclusion. Instead, the finale rewinds to imagine a meet-cute for the couple in the story. It’s a scene from a rom-com, uncomplicated and predictable, when it could have been subversive and just as sweet.

Maybe Modern Love didn’t set out to be a work that would end with all the answers to the biggest questions about love. Its primary selling point is its A-list cast, and highlighting such star-studded ensembles by revisiting them with an all-the-characters-are-connected montage is nothing new. Modern Love ’s grand finale shares DNA with the end of the anthology film Paris, Je T’aime ; the airport scene in Love Actually ; and the director Garry Marshall’s holiday-centric films . But unlike its predecessors, Modern Love had eight episodes to explore relationships, and could have mined much more nuance out of the nebulous concept in its title.

That’s the point of Modern Love, after all. “Love, for me, is less about definitions than examples,” the column’s longtime editor, Daniel Jones, wrote in his introduction to the 2019 essay collection. “These tales shock and instruct. They provoke laughter and heartache and tears. Occasionally (it’s true) they aren’t even very modern. Always they pry open the oyster shell of human love to reveal the dark beauty within.” Modern Love doesn’t reveal such dark beauty; it seals that metaphorical shell shut, ignoring it in favor of an empty takeaway. Modern love, according to the show, means Hollywood romances. Real-life ones—with all their painful, wonderful baggage—will have to remain words on a page.

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Modern Love review – vapid, nauseating ... and that's before Ed Sheeran shows up

Based on the long-running New York Times column, Amazon’s new comedy-drama boasts big names but flattens real stories into schmaltzy fantasies

T he New York Times’ Modern Love column, a weekly first-person essay about love and relationships, is such an institution that it is a wonder it has taken so long to make a series out of it. It has already been spun off into a very good podcast, with the stories read by big-name stars. But Modern Love (Amazon Prime) for television continues the streaming giant’s run of so-so dramas that can’t quite break new ground. This should be a surefire success. It’s A-list and painfully classy, but over eight episodes it only rarely lifts off, and instead settles into an oddly bland, will-this-do middle ground.

I expected something along the lines of Easy, another half-hour anthology show about love and relationships. Easy was – well – easy to love, though this is far more wholesome. If Easy is a 4am taxi back to a stranger’s house after a big night out, Modern Love is an afternoon coffee, but just one, because you both have somewhere else you would rather be. Its eight episodes follow lovestruck or lovelorn New Yorkers, and while it is mostly about romantic love, it has a healthy respect for the power of supportive friends and family, too. The first episode is about a doorman’s years-long paternal affection for a woman who lives in the apartment building where he works; a later instalment is about a first date that ends up in a trip to the hospital. Episodes are pleasant, if slight, and if you’ve seen any film about finding love in New York from the past 30 years, will feel very familiar.

One of the biggest draws is episode three – Take Me As I Am, Whoever I Am– in which Anne Hathaway plays Lexi, a lawyer with bipolar disorder struggling to manage her highs and lows. It is by far the most distinctive of the eight, and views mental illness through an ambitiously theatrical lens. When she is manic, Lexi is a Rita Hayworth-esque bombshell who craves peaches in the middle of the night and charms men in the supermarket into having breakfast with her. When she is low, she can barely get out of bed and can only bring herself to eat muesli. John Carney, who executive produced the series and directs most of the episodes, has turned it into a sort of musical, with My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend flourishes and a joke about La La Land. Strange, then, that it is the stripped back scenes that ring most true: it finds its emotional core in a scene in a diner, with two women deciding simply to become friends. The razzle-dazzle window-dressing feels extraneous, with Hathaway’s performance at its best when it is quietest.

There are two episodes that prove exceptions to Modern Love’s mostly saccharine and straightforward worldview, and both have moments of honesty that feel authentic rather than stagey. When Cupid Is a Prying Journalist (I do not recognise this description of journalists) sees Dev Patel play a tech mogul who invented a dating site, while Catherine Keener is a writer sent to profile him. She asks him if he has ever been in love; they end up swapping stories about the one who got away. It nails the romance perfectly, in part because they are a great platonic pairing, but also because it allows each story to take a different path. One is fairytale, the other stoic. It is the episode that packs in the elegance you suspect they were reaching for elsewhere, and its finale is a genuine tearjerker.

The other standout, Rallying to Keep the Game Alive, adds some much needed vinegar. Written and directed by Sharon Horgan, it stars Tina Fey and John Slattery as a long-married couple with two teenage children who are wondering why they’re still together. They watch a film about penguins, and wonder what the point of long-term love is; they go to couples’ therapy, and bicker their way through it, grasping impatiently for some common ground. (A line about whether cooking can be a hobby is the finest in the whole series.) Eventually, they settle on vicious, rule-breaking tennis. It is the least sentimental episode, and by far the best.

Though they are based on true essays, the rest of the stories have a peculiar veneer of fantasy to them. As an occasional indulgence, it’s sweet, but over eight episodes, it becomes sickly. That is to say nothing of its insistence on adding to the inexplicably long list of Ed Sheeran cameos out there in the world. Overall, the feeling is one of anecdotes that have been told over and over until they have been smoothed into one familiar shape, losing all of the rough, awkward edges of what actually happened over time. Advice for anyone reading who might be interested in making a series out of the Guardian’s own Blind Date: the one with the house party and the left-behind knickers might have just enough bite.

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