This is a public service message – binge watching tear-jerkers can be bad for your health. Or at least, bad for your face.
If anyone had seen me (and I made sure they didn’t) after watching several episodes of Modern Love on Amazon Prime on Friday, they would have been horrified.
Noisy sobbing, mascara streaming, blotchy cheeks.
And yes, it’s supposed to a romantic comedy – but each episode of this anthology delivered a sucker punch to my poor, bleeding heart.
The show is inspired by the New York Times column of the same name, which publishes readers’ tales of love in all its glorious and complex forms.
And to bring to life eight of the stories, why not cast a starry line-up of actors, including Anne Hathaway, Andy Garcia, Tina Fey and Andrew “Hot Priest” Scott?
The opening titles of people hugging and kissing throughout the ages is a bit like that nauseating Love Actually airport scene. Enough to give me concern that this was going to be as saccharine as a sweet shop.
But I was pleasantly surprised. While each stand-alone episode delivers like a mini Hollywood movie, the subject matter isn’t all glamour and gloss.
Cristin Milioti, the star of How I Met Your Mother, is a single woman with a slightly weird but sweet relationship with her over-protective Albanian doorman.
“I did not like him. He will never be calling you,” says the doorman, of her latest date. He becomes a father figure as she prepares to be a single mum.
Elsewhere, Anne Hathaway gives an absolutely knockout performance as a woman struggling with bipolar.
Her life swings from full-on La La Land, dancing in supermarkets, singing in sequins, to hiding under her duvet for days on end as the “monster” of depression takes hold.
In another episode, Dev Patel is the brilliant founder of a dating app who is being interviewed by a journalist who wants to know if he’s ever been in love.
There’s a pause. “I don’t have to print it,” she says. Print what? “That story that’s written all over your face.” Cue the love story.
Sure, the series can be a bit cheesy sometimes. There is more than one montage.
Montages should be left where they belong – in Richard Curtis movies.
But I was fully invested in these relationships in just half-hour episodes.
It’s a mixed bag of scenarios, and some episodes are better than others. Sharon Horgan penned the episode with Tina Fey and John Slattery as a couple considering separation, but it fell flat for me.
Mostly, Modern Love treads that fine line between sweet but not sickly, funny but with depth. Pick and choose which ones you fancy – just don’t watch them all at once unless you have defibrillator.
