‘The Four Seasons’ Co-Creators Found Its Authentic Comedy Harder to Write Than the Wild World of ’30 Rock’

Note: This story contains spoilers from “The Four Seasons.”

Most people would assume that the zany worlds of “30 Rock,” “Never Have I Ever” and “Great News” would be more difficult to write than a grounded relationship comedy. But that wasn’t the case for Tracey Wigfield and Lang Fischer, who created Netflix’s “The Four Seasons” alongside their longtime collaborator Tina Fey.

“We really had to police our whole room,” Fisher told TheWrap. Most of the writers for “The Four Seasons” have “30 Rock” in their past writing credits.

“It was a learning curve to understand what exactly is the tone. How do we make scenes — even if they’re not packed with jokes — feel dynamic and interesting enough so that they’re not just scenes from a Hallmark movie or something,” Wigfield told TheWrap. “You can cover up a poorly written scene with a bunch of really funny jokes so that no one notices. It’s harder to write something that feels really authentic.”

“The Four Seasons” is a passion project for Fey. An adaptation of the 1981 romantic comedy starring, written and directed by Alan Alda and starring heavy hitters like Carol Burnett and Rita Moreno, “The Four Seasons” follows three couples who have long been friends. Told over the course of a year, both the movie and the show check in with these couples during their quarterly vacation, tracing how the group has been impacted after Nick (Steve Carell) leaves his wife Anne (Kerri Kenney) and starts dating a younger woman (Erika Henningsen).

Alda, who gave his blessing to the project, appears in the series in a guest role. “He’s such a comedy legend; that meant so much to so many people. And he was so gracious. The whole crew lined up and it was like Mickey Mouse at Disneyland,” Wigfield said.

During a recent screening of the original movie, Fey gave a speech that revealed how much Alda and his work meant to her. In turn, the comedy legend and “M*A*S*H*” star revealed “how much he loves Tina, how this show honored him and how thankful he was,” Fisher said. “It was really special.”

Fey, Lang and Wigfield started working on “The Four Seasons” roughly two years before its release Thursday. Fey had already purchased the rights to the movie and was looking for another show where she would be a series regular. The trio also wanted to work on a project that was tonally different than any of the shows they had written before.

But to make the adaptation work, they had to alter Alda’s original movie. The eight-episode structure of the comedy allowed them to explore these complicated relationships on deeper levels. Some of the characters were also slightly tweaked to better fit their actors. That’s what happened to Jack, a character who was more judgmental when he was played by Alda but who is a romantic when played by Will Forte to better play off of Fey’s sharp-tongued Kate. As for Colman Domingo’s Danny, he was changed specifically with “The Madness” and “Sing Sing” actor in mind.

“What do we think he’s like in real life? He dresses so well, he seems like he has such good taste,” Wigfield and the rest of the room asked while crafting Domingo’s character.

One of the biggest changes in the series has to do with this story’s ending. Both the movie and the show end with the group (including the other women) bonding after they save one of their friends from falling into the ice. But in the show, the real spark for their coming together is the death of Carell’s character.

“We wanted to really tell a very authentic story about what it’s like to be middle aged, and it’s not out of the realm of possibility to lose a friend at this age,” Lang explained. “We needed some more larger plot twists here and there. But we really felt like seeing this group of friends support each other in the best and worst times. It felt natural for the end of the season to be them supporting each other in grief.”

Though both Wigfield and Lang know their series is a departure from their typical shows, they’re confident it has a place in this current television climate. “Even though it’s not a super silly comedy, this show to us felt like it was something that people maybe would be interested in watching, something that just feels like getting into a hot tub with friends,” Wigfield said. “It’s something that’s a little easier and a little bit of a respite from from some of the more intense stuff that is popular right now.”

It’s not just the appetite for comedies that’s changed. Wigfield and Lang have noticed the system around making television comedies is far different than it was in the early 2000s. Both emphasized that the age-old advice that comedies need time to find their audience no longer applies.

“The stories you used to hear about like, ‘Four people watched “Seinfeld.” It took four years to grow’ — not only does no one have the time or money for that. That’s just not true anymore in the way people consume TV,” Wigfield said. “If you see a show and you like it, you immediately go online and tell people, who tell 10 billion other people. The slow trickle of information by the water cooler, I don’t think exists in the internet age.”

“The most important thing for your parent company or companies to do is market your show,” Lang added.

“The Four Seasons” is now streaming on Netflix.

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