The Four Seasons on Netflix is a relationship comedy about a set of three well-off married couples and their quarterly holidays over — you guessed it — each season of the year. It was meant to be The White Lotus but without all the death. Well, scratch that last bit.
The eight-episode first season is the project of writers Tina Fey, Tracey Wigfield and Lang Fisher, who adapted the 1981 film of the same name. But the writers made several significant changes from the original Alan Alda film that may have surprised an audience expecting cosier vibes.
Fey plays the uptight holiday planner of the group Kate, married to dependable Jack (Will Forte). Nick (Steve Carrell) is unhappy in his marriage to his oblivious wife of 25 years Anne (Kerri Kenney-Silver). Tasteful Danny (Colman Domingo) is with his Italian husband Claude (Marco Calvani). In the film, the Italian spouse was Claudia, but the show has been updated to be a little more diverse and have queer couple representation.
Spoilers ahead
It’s Carrell’s character Nick who gets the biggest change. As in the original film, Nick shocks his friends at their first annual holiday by announcing his intention to divorce wife Anne, before shacking up with the much younger Ginny (Erika Henningsen).
But Nick doesn’t get his happy ending with his hot younger woman this time around. Instead, he’s killed off-screen in a car crash at the end of the penultimate seventh episode, while the group is on a New Year’s skiing trip.
Carrell seems to have taken his character’s death all in his stride, though. “It is a running joke now that I die in every TV show that I'm in,” Carell told Netflix outlet Tudum. “I've died in the last two, and now I die in this one. I hope to continue to die in TV shows well into the future.”
The actor has indeed had a string of TV deaths. Could he be the next Sean Bean — the king of on-screen deaths?
Carrell played Mitch Kessler on season 2 of The Morning Show Apple TV+, who died in another car accident off-screen, driving over a cliff in Italy. Carrell had a more violent death playing Dr Alan Strauss in The Patient, who is strangled to death by his serial killer captor/client.
Fey and Carrell knew Nick’s death was coming, but it came as a shock to the rest of the cast. They didn’t find out until the table read for that episode’s script.
Colman Domingo, who plays Danny, said Nick’s death was “punch in the gut”. “For someone who had divorced his wife and created chaos within these friend groups, it was such a loss because we were already losing him a little bit before, but now we’ve fully lost him,” he added.
It also makes the news subtly revealed by Ginny — that she’s pregnant — in the final episode more bittersweet. Ginny is also pregnant in the 1981 film, but it’s Nick that reveals the news to the group.
While the first season of The Four Seasons covers the entirety of the film, Ginny’s pregnancy in light of Nick’s death does open up some tantalising threads for a second season. Given the show’s popularity (it’s been in the number one spot on Netflix) it’s not out of the question that the friends could be going on more holidays together very soon.
“If we did another season, we would want the same group of friends,” writer Wigfield told TV Insider. “We’d want Ginny to really be tied in there because she and Anne are going to have children who are siblings. And it just gives us a lot to play with in their relationship.”
Fey added: “if we were lucky enough to do more of these, we’d certainly all like to hang out again.”
The White Lotus and now The Four Seasons — if any other shows come out named after glitzy hotel chains, make sure you don’t get too attached to the characters.
The Four Seasons is streaming now on Netflix
