Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Modern Love’ Season 2 On Amazon Prime Video, With More Stories Based On The Popular New York Times Column

Season 2 of Modern Love, based on the New York Times essay column that every writer in the US has submitted to at least once (including us), gives us more stories about people who find, sustain, or lose love in all sorts of myriad ways. The first season, in 2019, made a big splash with big stars populating sprawling stories. Anne Hathaway raising a child on her own, for instance. This season’s stories seem smaller, more intimate — and use a lot more creative license. That’s not always a bad thing. Read on for more.

MODERN LOVE SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A woman gets out of her vintage sports car and walks into the practice where she works as a doctor. We see her see all sorts of patients, then, as she’s about to leave, she’s told a mother is calling in with a child with a fever.

The Gist: In the first episode, based on a 2016 essay by Doris Iarovici, is about that doctor, Stephanie Curran (Minnie Driver), and her relationship with a 40-year-old Triumph Stag, which she drives occasionally, knowing it will likely break down on her on the regular. “We have to stop meeting like this,” says Jerry (Keith McErlean), the exasperated tow truck driver and mechanic whom she summons any time the Stag breaks down. As she drives the Stag home, we see her talking to herself, but not quite sure what she’s saying.

Stephanie has a daughter in college and one in elementary school; as she and her husband Niall (Don Wycherley) trying to figure out where to tighten their belts. One thing she thinks she should do is finally sell the Stag. But what we find out when she talks up (or down?) the car to a potential buyer is that this car belonged to her late husband Michael (Tom Burke), and when she gets in and drives it, the person she’s talking to is him.

As she takes one last drive, she thinks back to the good times the two of them had in this car, from when they were dating in college to getting a Christmas tree with their daughter Shannon (Zara Devlin). To her, it’s one of the diminishing spaces where she can remember Michael, and wonders if that’s just her not letting go.

In another episode, based on one of the column’s 100-word “Tiny Love Stories” written by Cecelia Pesao, a bookish college student named Paula (Lucy Boynton) meets-cute with a handsome man named Michael (Kit Harington) on a train from Galway to Dublin, right as Ireland is shutting down due to the COVID pandemic in March, 2020. The meet-cute is so cute that one of the other passengers sings a song about it. Instead of getting each other’s cell numbers so they can text and FaceTime, they vow to meet at the station in two weeks.

But during those two weeks — Michael stays with his dudebro brother Declan (Jack Reynor) and Paula with her hippie mother Jane (Miranda Richardson) — they realize that this lockdown isn’t going away. But when the date happens, they both have different reactions to the prospect of meeting each other at the station.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Modern Love Season 1, of course, but also longer-form love anthologies like HBO Max’s Love Life.

Our Take: Both episodes we saw were poignant and funny in different ways. By coincidence, they both were shot and took place in Dublin, though Amazon’s press release mentions other locales; neither essay (or essaylet) they were based on took place in Ireland. But John Carney, who wrote and directed both the episodes we saw and is the series’ showrunner, thought the stories played better in his hometown. He made the right decision, as the city’s older residential buildings and hilly scenery expanded stories that were fairly simple in nature.

Minnie Driver always fully embodies her characters, and she does the same here as Stephanie; we’re fully convinced that she’s holding on to the memory of her husband, and that the way she’s doing it completely works for her. Boynton and Harington have fine chemistry in their episode, but the story gets even funnier when they’re forced to quarantine with their family members, because they’re both so damn frustrating. We laughed hard that Declan immediately spat out Game of Thrones at Michael when he was told that Paula is a medievalist (because it’s Kit Harington, of course).

What we appreciated was that the stories took on lives of their own, separate from the source material, just from a shift in locale. We also appreciated that some of the 100-word “Tiny Stories” were used as the basis for some episodes; those brief stories give the episode’s writers freedom to change everything but the basic premise, and the result can be as funny and touching as the “Strangers on a Train” episode.

Sex and Skin: Surprisingly none.

Parting Shot: Stephanie picks Shannon up from college, and the two of them drive in the Stag, singing to Van Morrison (a callback from one of Stephanie’s flashbacks).

Sleeper Star: Tom Burke says a lot with a look and a shoulder rub, which is all he’s able to do when he’s sitting next to current-day Stephanie as she talks to him. And in the flashbacks, he’s as funny and emotional as you’d expect.

Most Pilot-y Line: It’s not out of the realm of possibility that Stephanie’s clinic has an American or Canadian receptionist, but hearing that woman’s voice threw us off a bit, especially when she gave a temperature in Celsius.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Season 2 of Modern Love is better than the first because Carney has decided to concentrate on more intimate stories, and not try to lean on huge names to get people’s attention.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Modern Love Season 2 On Prime Video