The Four Seasons is a very funny taste of the America we miss

We find them again as they head to upstate New York to scatter his ashes, Ginny sporting a variety of unitards which, as the Daily Mail would put it, leave nothing to the imagination. Danny (Colman Domingo) and Claude (Marco Calvani) are quarrelling about whether they want to have a baby through surrogacy. Nick, being a hedge fund manager, has left a great deal of money, but should Ginny get some of it? Jack (Will Forte) just wants everyone to honour Nick’s memory and buzzes about like a bee with a Go-Pro strapped to his forehead. 

The Four Seasons is Gen X catnip: the comedy is perfectly observed, and in the earlier episodes it is hard to stop grinning. The one-liners are hugely fun (Danny to Claude, fighting about Hallowe’en decorations: “I told you you could put your Dracula out, you just couldn’t put it on”).

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As summer turns to autumn, series two takes on a harder edge. The fifth episode tells the story of a terrible Thanksgiving. Jack’s character acquires a more violent edge, and the turkey takes the brunt of it. 

Then, unexpectedly, the series flashes back six years to the friends’ first get-together during the pandemic and the damage it did to Jack. This is the only episode of the season to have been written by Tina Fey, and she does not spare us from the awful rituals of the period, including an excruciating Zoom talent show and home Covid tests (Jack picked up a free batch by queuing for hours at a clinic, with consequences he failed to anticipate).

Series one of The Four Seasons tackled the uneasy relationship between Gen X parents and their grown children. This time, the children have mostly moved on, but the parents are still working out how to live without them. Anne (Kerry Kenney-Silver) becomes infatuated with Ginny’s baby. Claude and Danny bicker about whether they want to take responsibility for another human, until a twist takes the choice away.

Fey, who plays Kate, was one of the actors in the seminal Comedy Central Last Fuckable Day sketch 15 years ago, and the series is subtle about the pressure women come under to establish new identities for themselves in late middle age. When the friends arrive in Italy for Christmas, a little boy compares Anne to Befana, a mythical witch-like woman who refused the Magis’ invitation to look for the baby Jesus and now delivers presents. 

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Instead of rejecting the comparison, The Four Seasons leans into it: Anne does look like Befana, and the priest prevails on her to borrow a broomstick and entertain the kids. Lesser writers would have ended this storyline with Botox and fillers. Maybe there is hope for un-injected women over 50 after all.

The final episode nevertheless feels a little wrung out. Jack and Kate are trying, again, to keep their marriage going by being honest with each other in new ways. Still, none of the self-absorption is enough to stop this series from being very, very funny, especially the climax of episode two. 

It would be wrong to hint at the identity of a possible new love interest who turns up at the end. But British viewers will certainly be looking forward to a third series – and judging by the quality of this one, The Four Seasons will be getting another season. 

The Four Seasons is on Netflix. Ros Taylor hosts the More Jam Tomorrow and Oh God, What Now? podcasts