TV review: ‘Grace and Frankie’ worth a try, but many potential viewers won’t see it

It’s around the fourth episode of the comedy “Grace and Frankie” that you can see how well it is working. Fortunately, you do not have to wait a month to see that.

The series starring Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin is new on Netflix, where shows including this one customarily arrive in full-season form – in this case, 13 episodes at once.

This, of course, creates a dilemma for viewers. Do you spread the show out, in what one network calls linear viewing, one telecast a week? Or do you dive in at once and see how far into the season you can swim at one time?

In this case, at least, take a long dip. “Grace and Frankie” has plenty to say about getting older, starting life anew and what happens to everyone involved in a long relationship when that falls apart. And it does so with some honest humor.

The falling apart is what starts the show. The precise, formal Grace (Fonda) and the more counterculture Frankie (Tomlin) have long known each other but do not get along. They are acquainted through their law-partner husbands Robert (Martin Sheen, for Fonda) and Sol (Sam Waterston, for Tomlin). What they have not known is that their husbands have also been lovers for 20 years – and now plan to leave their wives in order to marry each other.

Created by Marta Kauffman (co-creator of “Friends”) and Howard J. Morris, “Grace and Frankie” could have taken that bombshell in some obvious directions, turning into, say, “The Odd Couple.” But the show looks at the lives of all four people – not to mention their adult children – in more detailed ways.

It acknowledges the complications that have come from the main characters knowing each other for so long. Their social circles intersect, for example, and they are going to see each other – and will have to explain the new order more than once.

In addition, people who have been together as long as these two couples are going to find themselves still connected emotionally, however much they are moving on. And unlike “The Odd Couple” and notwithstanding the title of the show, “Grace and Frankie” could easily have been called “Grace and Frankie and Robert and Sol.” The exes do not disappear once the show has started; their relationship has to adjust, too, now that they have come out.

Then there is the issue of starting over late in life – the main actors are all in their 70s – especially when it’s not your choice to do so. Grace, for one, is not used to being ignored, let alone cast aside, but is at a point in life where she’s supposed to have settled quietly into her dotage – no matter how well she looks, and Fonda looks great.

Where the show huffs and puffs a bit is in the adult children: Grace’s are played by Brooklyn Decker and June Diane Raphael, and Frankie’s by Ethan Embry and Baron Vaughn. Although there is some entertainment in seeing the parents’ ways in the offspring from these marriages, and in their dealing with the changes, the show chose to pile on a complication among the children that is largely unnecessary.

Even that and the occasionally forced joke in the dialogue are for the most part overcome by the quality of the acting. Kauffman has talked about the sheer professionalism of the core cast.

Their years of experience show repeatedly in the ways they keep their characters from turning into cartoons even when the scripts might allow it. (That may explain why they have all worked with writer Aaron Sorkin at some point; he has often needed great acting to make his writing seem better.)

Tomlin shines in the four episodes I previewed, conveying Frankie’s embrace of some activities (including peyote) without pushing her into loopiness. Fonda’s Grace is demanding, a bit self-absorbed – but far from mean-spirited. And there’s some lovely stuff from Waterston and Sheen, who show both how they have loved each other for a long time and how they are in a new, unexplored place.

The supporting cast is also fine, with Decker and Raphael noteworthy among the children, and Mary Kay Place and Joe Morton guest-starring early on.

If there is a major problem for “Grace and Frankie,” it is that it’s on Netflix. Yes, that allows for some more adult content than would have been possible on a broadcast network – and for episodes that run significantly longer than regular-TV broadcasts would thanks to the lack of commercials.

Still, older viewers eager to see this show may not yet be tuned to the online TV world. As I have said before, the migration of programming from broadcast to cable and satellite, then to premium channels, and now to online inevitably leaves some viewers behind. Not long ago, I talked to a reader who was unhappy because the Cleveland abduction movie was on cable — where she would not be able to see it.

Both technology and economics work against some folks keeping up. And “Grace and Frankie” is worth keeping up with.