Modern Love - a modern series or old school love stories?

When I watched the trailer for Modern Love it reminded me of Love Actually. In fact I was convinced it was a series inspired by or based on Love Actually but when I rewatched the trailer for this post I saw no mention of the film. So yes, in short this series has a strong Love Actually feel.

What do I mean by that? Well, there are multiple love stories, they are all connected and a ton of famous celebs. I’ll go into a bit more detail on all three of those in the spoilery part.

So what’s it about without giving any spoilers away:

It’s an eight part series and every episode has a unique love story, which is what I love about the series. The best part is that they aren’t traditional love stories. With a few of the episodes I wasn’t sure how the story was going to play out which is rarely the case when watching love stories in my opinion. We all know the typical story: girl meets boy, falls for boy, they get together, something happens that separates them, and in the nick of time they get back together. Perhaps two out of the eight stories could be seen as more typical love stories with the twist that it’s the guy chasing the girl. This of course makes the series as a whole more relatable to a broader audience and shows the people who for years have related to the traditional love stories, that there is way more to love than the above mentioned example.

Moving on to the many celebrities who pop-up in this series. As mentioned this was an aspect that haviley reminded me of Love Actually just that Modern Love seemed to go about their famous faces more subtly. In Love Actually it was very obvious to me who was supposed to be a big celebrity even if I didn’t know them before having seen the film. It could of course be that Modern Love was trying to be obvious about it too - as that tactic makes sense - and I just didn’t notice because so many of the famous faces were unknown to me.

Naturally Anne Hathaway is a very familiar face but that was not the only reason the episode “Take Me as I Am, Whoever I Am” was my favourite. This story was probably the one that surprised me the most as in how it ended. In my opinion it was the most unique story out of the eight but more about that later. My least favourite episode was “So He Looked Like Dad. It was Just Dinner, Rigth?”. I believe it’s not a spoiler if I reveal why I liked it the least. The protagonist - Maddy - of this particular story was very naive. Despite her best friend point out the situation she finds herself in she chooses to ignore it. However, what tipped me over the edge in my dislike for Maddy was when one of the older male characters cries ever so slightly in front of her and her first comment is: “Guys your age shouldn’t be crying.” That being said, that is the only real criticism I can come up with for the series. If you haven’t watched it and you’re into romcoms I would really recommend this series and will ask you to stop reading here, as I will be mentioning spoilers.

I found the ending somewhat disappointing. As mentioned I was expecting the series to be like Love Actually. There was nowhere near enough combining the stories. I was waiting for someone to be related. I was hoping that the elderly Lady in the last episode was going to be Lexi. And when that didn’t come true I thought maybe just maybe Margot - the elderly lady - could be Tobin and Andy’s daughter...but no. The only thing connecting these stories was that they happened to happen at the same time in the same city.

Moving on to a happier note. So why was “Take Me as I Am, Whoever I Am” my favourite episode? Well, that’s because it depicted something I had never seen on screen before in an understandable way. Of course I knew of bipolar disorder this episode made me understand and have understanding for this disorder more than any school lesson or psychology book ever has. I loved seeing Lexi grow as a person in a way which is firstly rare for a romance story (although in recent years it has become more common that a woman starts learning to love herself instead of falling for prince charming) but even rare when there’s a mental disorder in the picture. I don’t have bipolar and am naturally not an expert on the matter, so I can’t say anything about how realistic her progress was but it did come across as rather realistic to me. I also think it’s great that a mental disorder took centre stage in one of these stories.

So in short, I really enjoyed all the different approaches to love stories and what love is and I would recommend the series to a lover of romance with a splash of comedy.

Wishing you a lovely day

Shaura