THE FOUR SEASONS (2025): Episode 1.1

Here is the decision, plainly. Netflix has remade the 1981 film THE FOUR SEASONS, and this first episode is both morally offensive and — maybe more surprising — dull. The talent is real. Steve Carell is as funny as ever. But even he can't lift the leaden feel of a series that has nothing meaningful for its characters to say to one another.

The problem runs deeper than any single scene. Nothing binds these couples together but "the feeling of being in love," so when that feeling fades, so does everything else. The writing falls flat because these selfish people have nothing worth discussing, and the whole thing revels in what our source calls its humorless depravity.

So this is an easy answer. There's no craft here worth the cost, and the worldview is one no family should absorb. Skip it, and spend the evening on something with a soul.

Three longtime "couples" gather for the traditional quarterly vacation that has always held their friendship together. This time, the routine cracks.

One of the pairs is homosexual. One of the husbands has decided to leave his wife, and the rest of the friends have no idea how to respond. Then the wife who's about to be left surprises her husband with a vow renewal ceremony — and the weekend gets complicated. That's where the first episode plants its seeds.

Two stars, and here's what they mean: this is competently made and thoroughly boring. Our source calls it "so much more boring than the 1981 original film," and the reason is structural. Because nothing holds these people together but a passing feeling, viewers have no one to connect to — everyone on screen is selfish at the best of times.

The writing is the weakest link. When your characters have nothing meaningful to discuss, no amount of polish makes the dialogue land. Steve Carell's comic timing is the lone bright spot, and even that can't rescue the leaden mood. What's left is a story without heart or soul — technically finished, emotionally empty.

This series believes love is a feeling, and that the feeling is sovereign. Our source names the dominant worldview as a pagan homosexual Romanticism — the idea that whatever the heart wants at the moment is what must be obeyed. It's an idolatry, and the episode shows its emptiness without ever seeming to notice: when your only glue is being "in love," you have nothing left when the mood passes.

Watch how the men counsel their divorcing friend. In the 1981 film, one character's decision to leave his wife was a moment for genuine reflection. Here, the friends offer only jaded, throwaway band-aids — one of them literally advising, "just sleep with someone else." That casual endorsement of adultery is the whole worldview in miniature.

As a conviction about the work: the most visible change from the original is that one of the couples is now two men, and the series pushes that agenda about as directly as it could. Our source finds it in-your-face and morally offensive, and reports that the darker fruit of these first-episode seeds is still to come.

Against all this, Scripture names love as something far sturdier than a feeling — patient, faithful, self-giving, the kind that "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things" (1 Corinthians 13:7).

A famous cast, a Netflix budget, and nothing underneath — a boring show with a bold agenda and no soul. There's no reason here worth your evening or your conscience, so our answer is simple: skip it. Looking for something warmer and worth the time? Try our latest family-friendly picks.