Netflix has found its answer to The White Lotus – and the characters are actually likeable

After years of toxic marriages, crumbling facades, and dead bodies floating in paradise, Netflix has found a sunnier antidote to The White Lotus — its Tina Fey’s new resort-set comedy The Four Seasons, which has quickly climbed to #1 on Netflix in the US and offers a refreshingly human alternative to the biting cynicism of its HBO cousin.

Based on Alan Alda’s 1981 romantic comedy, The Four Seasons is a breezy, witty look at friendship and midlife upheaval — minus the murder and emotional decay. Fey and Carell lead an all-star ensemble including Marco Calvani, Colman Domingo, Will Forte, Erika Henningsen, and Kerri Kenney-Silver, and the premise is simple but ripe with possibility:

Basically, six long-time friends head out for a relaxing group getaway, only to have their emotional luggage cracked wide open when one of the couples suddenly splits up. The friends are comprised of three couples — Kate (Fey) and Jack (Forte), Nick (Carell) and Anne (Kenney-Silver), and Danny (Domingo) and Claude (Calvani), and it’s Nick who sends ripples through the tight-knit group when he abruptly ends his marriage and introduces a younger girlfriend.

Unlike The White Lotus, though, the drama in The Four Seasons feels grounded; hopeful, even. You won’t walk away from the show weirded out or horrified. Carell himself has described the cast’s chemistry as “lived-in,” with relationships that feel like they’ve been weathered over years, not just dreamt up for screen time. Also unlike The White Lotus: While the name of Netflix’s new show might connote the real-life luxury hotel brand, the title instead mirrors the changing of the seasons through a structure that lets each episode (and vacation) reflect a different stage of emotional evolution. 

So what makes this show stand apart? It’s not just that the episodes are a tight, breezy 30 minutes. It’s that the tone is refreshingly humane. Where The White Lotus skewers privilege with razor-sharp satire, The Four Seasons leans into empathy. Even when introducing a potential third-wheel character — like Nick’s new girlfriend Ginny (Erika Henningsen) — the show resists easy stereotypes. Ginny is more, well, normal than anything else.

The Four Seasons also features none of White’s plot points that seem to exist mostly for the shock value they deliver — like the cringe-y incest in the just-ended season of The White Lotus, the same season that also gave us Sam Rockwell showing up to deliver a NSFW soliloquy that thinks it’s saying something profound about identity but mostly just screams: “Please tweet about this.”

In contrast, Fey’s new show celebrates warmth, humor, and a believable portrait of long-standing relationships tested by time. It offers a comforting reminder that normal relationships can also make for enjoyable television, especially when they’re presented with this much heart and comedic finesse. “From the title,” one Redditor notes, “I thought it was going to be like The White Lotus. Then I saw the cast and expected it to be hilarious.

“It wasn’t either. It was, however, a very interesting look at aging and how relationships (of all kinds) evolve and change with time. It was really good.”