Since 2004, The New York Times has featured a regular column titled Modern Love, where writers of all ages and backgrounds grapple with romance, relationships, dating and sexuality from every possible angle. There are essays on everything from middle-aged marriage breakdown to millennial ghosting, sexual guilt in motherhood to dating with Instagram as a backdrop, the baffling casualness of label-free relationships to the joys of love in old age. It’s smart, funny, often life-affirming and – equally often – very sad, and over the last 14 years it’s become a favourite source of reading material for both diehard romantics and the perpetually romantically confused.

Now, Modern Love is being adapted into a new anthology TV series. Amazon Studios has picked up the rights to bring the column to the small screen, according to The Hollywood Reporter, and plans to turn it into a romantic comedy series of eight standalone episodes – each exploring a different facet of what love means in 2018.

Irish filmmaker John Carney, who previously directed musical romantic comedies Begin Again, Once and Sing Street, will write, direct and produce the show, which will be executive produced by The New York Times. 

Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke told Deadline that the Modern Love series would “[tell] heightened stories about love and romance, not necessarily all romantic”.

Sam Dolnick, assistant managing editor at The New York Times, said in a statement that the newspaper hoped the TV series would continue the success of the Modern Love podcast and other spin-offs.

“Since its launch 14 years ago, Modern Love has struck a chord with readers that has only deepened with time,” he said.

“It remains one of our most popular columns both online and in print; it has become a successful weekly podcast; and the first Modern Love events last year were hits with live audiences. And now we are thrilled that Modern Love will become a TV show on Amazon.”

This isn’t the first attempt that’s been made to turn the column into a TV series. A different creative team, including Sex and the City writer Jenny Bicks, created a pilot for a HBO series based on the column almost 10 years ago. However, it never progressed past the pilot stage.

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