TV review: White Lotus hammers away at the same point in season three
The point of White Lotus is that rich people are unhappy and luxury holidays only make things worse.
(Sky Atlantic and NOW, February 17) has a formula.
There’s the dysfunctional, bored rich family, the dodgy guy with a woman of an inappropriate age, a bitchy group of friends, all staying at an exclusive White Lotus resort that will look good on Instagram.
The first episode likes to start with the discovery of an unidentified body, then we flashback to the oddball resort manager welcoming the guests to the resort.
The first season was okayish. The second season was outstanding, with warts and all humans instead of the cartoon characters from the previous outing. I wondered how they’d improve it again in season three. They didn’t. We’re back to season one.
The problem can be summed up by Patrick Schwarzenegger, who plays super-jock Saxon Ratliff.
He’s not just good at playing the entitled American rich-kid with a predator’s eye for the women; he’s too good at it.
I can’t take more than ten seconds of his Tom Cruise grinning face hitting on yet another guest at the pool. We get way more of Saxon than we need.
His prescription-drug addict mother Victoria is played by Parker Posey, who drawls out her lines in a southern accent you might use to tell a ghost story.
The bitchy group of friends this season are three women approaching middle-age, centred around the queen bee who has a part in a TV show.
The running joke, if you could call it that, is two of them are usually to be found bitching about the other one.
The only engaging character is Victoria’s husband, Timothy, who is falling apart as news drips in from the outside world that he is going to be arrested for some kind of dodgy dealing.
His slow descent is well done by actor Jason Isaacs, so you end up feeling something for at least one of the characters in the show.
Satire is a tricky business. The point of White Lotus is that rich people are unhappy and luxury holidays only make things worse.
That’s fine and they hammer away at that point again here, while also trying to harpoon the emptiness of the wellness craze.
But there is only so much enjoyment to be had from watching rich people suffer in a five star resort.
Season two got this, giving us enough in each character so we can hate them for being rich assholes, while feeling sorry for them at the same time.
Here’s it’s just rich assholes, over and over again.
There is barely a plot, with little more than the formulaic unidentified body to keep us hooked until the end. I lost interest a good bit before then.
