After the acclaim and awards showered on The White Lotus, Mike White’s bijou hotel-based black comedy-drama, the show returns for a second series, now shifted from Hawaii to a Sicilian coastal resort. It introduces us to a new crop of crazy rich Caucasians, several of whom — as we see in the flash-forward opening scene — will be going home in (no doubt luxurious) body bags.
Among the guests who arrived a week earlier are two nouveau-riche young couples on an excruciatingly extended double date, three generations of men from an affluent Italian-American family, and a familiar face from the first series: Tanya, the woman-child heiress played by Emmy-winner Jennifer Coolidge. But scarcely has a spritz been sipped on the beach before tides of tension and malaise sweep up the visiting parties.
Thirtysomething lawyer Harper (Aubrey Plaza) walks around the gilded resort with all the enthusiasm of someone about to bed down at a flea-ridden motel. The source of her gloom is not so much the marbled surroundings as the overly polished company. Having just sold his business for millions, her husband Ethan (Will Sharpe) suggested a joint trip with his already-minted smug former roommate Cameron (Theo James) and his blandly affable wife Daphne (Meghann Fahy). Harper — serving perhaps as a kind of proxy for us viewers — feels like an anxious interloper in this world of impressions and appearances. She makes no attempt to hide her discomfort, or her suspicions that her companions are only performatively carefree and content.
Making almost everyone uncomfortable, meanwhile, is Bert (the delightfully rakish F Murray Abraham), a fading octogenarian libertine who flirts with women young enough to be his granddaughter on his pilgrimage to his grandmother’s land. A roving eye has recently also cost his son Dominic (The Sopranos’ Michael Imperioli) his marriage. His avowals of contrition and shame would possibly ring truer if he weren’t also shepherding a local call girl (Simona Tabasco) in and out of the hotel — much to the disapproval of the manager (Sabrina Impacciatore).
His own son Albie (Adam DiMarco) is an apple that has fallen far from the tree. A respectful, overly earnest young man, he develops a rapport with Tanya’s enervated personal assistant, Portia (Haley Lu Richardson), who’s on standby for when her boss’s tragicomic attempt to live out her Monica Vitti dreams inevitably ends in tears.
White’s character-building, writing and direction all continue to brim with a keen wit and artfulness. But the show does lose a little of its subversive edge as it returns to broadly the same story about the existential void that is opened and deepened by an abundance of privilege — albeit this time with more of a focus on sexual inequalities than race. And the decision to once again insert a (murder?) mystery can seem a touch superfluous, especially with so much interpersonal “violence” and callousness already on show.
Perhaps this second sojourn at The White Lotus then isn’t quite necessary. But five-star hotels are never as much about necessity as they are about enjoyment and extravagance. As far as TV series go, few are quite as enjoyable, or as brilliantly baroque, as this one.
★★★★☆
On Sky Atlantic and Now in the UK and on HBO in the US
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