Love Life

A show whose second season found many of the weak spots of the first and course-corrected for a fuller, more interesting story. Ultimately, Marcus’s journey to happiness is much more compelling than Darby’s, and that is a welcome improvement.

It takes a lot of missteps and mistakes and clever moves to get there. It isn’t clear who he will end up with, until it is. But watching this delightful show weave all those elements together until it finds a path to satisfaction is a real treat.

A number of series try to speak to the specific weight people of color carry into the dating pool, but the fact that this show deftly maintains its comedic buoyancy while making Marcus' search for love stand apart in a way that's captivating and ultimately heartening is noteworthy.

It’s a smart showcase for a talented actor who seizes it with both hands, giving the rom-com genre a jolt as welcome as it is overdue.

Love Life‘s second season surpasses the first just by shifting the focus away from a subject we’ve seen so many times to one that has a messier, and more interesting, story.

Love Life isn’t the first rom-com to trace a character’s belated emotional coming-of-age through successive relationships, yet Harper’s subtle, unaffected performance and the insight with which the people in his life are written and cast save it from the glibness of rom-coms like John Cusack’s High Fidelity.

While it’s entertaining and a mostly breezy watch, it’s also committed to showing the realities of being one-half of a couple. Love requires work, introspection, and pushing oneself to be bigger and better for the sake of another. Love Life does not shy away from showing that. ... In a series structured so much around one character’s experience, it’s imperative that we connect with and enjoy that person. Harper makes that easy.