From 1940s Hollywood to New Age Connecticut, these funny, poignant tales of couples trying desperately to fit into heteronormative constraints while denying their true desires will make you chuckle even as they tug at your heartstrings.

Episode one: Repressed housewife May lives with her insufferably chill husband, Greg, in their pristine Joshua Tree bungalow. She yearns for her stuntwoman pen pal, Polly, whose letters get May hotter than the desert sun. One evening, the neighbors come to dinner, and the foursome gets thrown for a lasso when Polly makes a surprise entrance.

Episode two: In this scathingly funny send-up of delusional hipsters, Noah and Anya act like the perfect New Age, compost-conscious couple, until Noah becomes enamored with his Moth storytelling coach. When Anya’s brother and his partner come to dinner, Anya takes Noah to task with an uncontained spite that shatters her fragile veneer of progressive open-mindedness.

Episode three: Take one hard-partying couple, add a nurse dressed as a clown, throw in some chocolate cake, and you have…a complete and utter mess of epic proportions.

Episode four: Noah and Anya’s surprisingly sweet backstory is revealed through Noah’s Moth story. Or is it? Nothing is as it seems in this fraught and edgy follow-up to the world’s most hypocritical hipster couple, and the final victim is discovered in the last place you’d think to look.

Episode five: It’s the1940s and Hollywood actors in a sham marriage have to face the music — and their own consciences. Will Vivian throw over her jazz musician lover? Will Hugh dump his cute live-in beau whose secret bedroom romps with Hugh risk exposure from leering paparazzi?

— VICTORIA JASCHOB