In the second season of the anthology series, against the current romantic comedy, the main character is a black divorced young, embodied by William Jackson Harper.
by
Can the love quest be filmed like a sequence of experiences, not like an end in itself? This is the implicit and ambitious bet of Love Life, an anthological series produced by Paul Feig (Freaks and Geeks, The Office …), whose second season is broadcast on OCS. From the prologue, this one invokes a form of modernity. “There is no soul mate, there are only people looking for a way to create links,” warns, in the first episode, a male voice that will accompany the viewer throughout the ten dedicated in Marcus. Interpreted by William Jackson Harper (The Good Place), he succeeds Darby, the heroine of the first season, embodied by Anna Kendrick.
Marcus is a little older, a little more installed in life than Darby when the season begins. It is also black, while Darby was white. The first success of this season is to remember that diversity is part of the DNA of the series, which consists in multiplying the approaches and the points of view, in order to grasp what is played in every meeting, in each rupture. The carnation of the person with whom Marcus is in a relationship will, logically, importance throughout the episodes, even if this question is never considered central.
a clinical side
The season opens with a meeting during a marriage that will rush the divorce of Marcus and his wife, Emilie. Promising publisher, but not sure of him, complexed by parents and a charismatic sister, Marcus starts again from zero, and this season is less the story of an accomplishment than that of a resetting of possible and desires.
Between shots of a night, secret flames and fantasies of youth, the series makes Marcus oscillate between a postedolescent lightness and sadly adult questions. His sentimental destiny intersects with the desire for sexual experimentation, the need for professional and family emancipation. The strength of the series is ultimately never to essential the love or give it contours too net.
Paradoxically, this gives the series a clinical side. And, like an object of study observed through the windows of a laboratory, Marcus sometimes seems to suffer the events. William Jackson Harper, who does not miss any charm, trouble to give the measure of feelings that cross the character. This reserve has the advantage of highlighting its game partners – they are all excellent. It also makes Love Life a modest series in the finest sense of the term, and inscribes, in a certain way, against the current of the current, often narcissistic, tearful and “sensitive” “rom.