'Master of None' changes direction and focus with 'Moments in Love'

After a four-year hiatus, "Master of None" returns in title only, with the same creative auspices but a completely different focus. The result, subtitled "Moments in Love," shifts to Lena Waithe's Denise character, with a five-episode "season" that essentially plays like an independent film -- more drama than comedy -- just diced into chapters.

For fans of the series that starred Aziz Ansari, who co-wrote the project with Waithe and directs in its entirety, it's an intriguing creative choice, if one that essentially results in a project that, other than an appearance by Ansari, exists separately from the original. Upon dispensing with that bit of narrative whiplash, "Moments in Love" stands on its own, while purposefully moving at a snail's pace that tests the viewer's level of interest. The story opens with Denise -- now a successful writer -- quietly living in the country with her wife, Alicia (Naomi Ackie). The first installment captures the slow-going rhythms of their life together, before gradually throwing a major hurdle into this garden of Eden, when the two begin to discuss the prospect of starting a family.