With Love

The situations here aren’t new, but they feel different in Calderón Kellett’s hands. “With Love” is a vibrant and engaging original on par with some of the best network content out there — deliciously captivating and hard to stop watching.

If you find Hallmark’s holiday movies to be a little too sappy for your taste, With Love will scratch that itch you may have for a warm family-oriented romcom, with just a bit more representation and edge.

If you find Hallmark’s holiday movies to be a little too sappy for your taste, With Love will scratch that itch you may have for a warm family-oriented romcom, with just a bit more representation and edge.

The ultra-sincere spirit of “One Day at a Time” feels alive and well in “With Love,” which isn’t quite as polished as that earlier show, but recalls it in its skillful and occasionally surprising swerves between humor and poignancy (as well as in its slight preachiness).

I grew fond of the characters, most of them Latino, some of them LGBTQ, none of them quite as flat and cookie-cutter-ish as those you might find on Hallmark and Lifetime. ... It’s all warm and filled with familial love, and even the trans story line is defined by happiness, not trauma. Reality? Bitterness? Loneliness? In “With Love,” they’re beside the point.

Depending on your mood, it might not matter that much if the storylines wrap up a little too neatly, or the supporting characters feel a little bit flat, or no one seems to have any life outside their family and love interests. With Love is a warm hug of a show that pulls you in and reassures you everything’s going to be all right.

There’s plenty of empathetic charm lying in between the lines of “With Love.” The problem is that those lines get more and more stilted, taking many of the performances with them. When “With Love” is at its best, though, it’s usually when focusing on its two queerer couples.