The White Lotus (2021) Review: Paradise With a Body Count

Is The White Lotus worth watching?

Yes. The White Lotus is a wickedly funny, beautifully observed satire of wealth and privilege, and one of the defining television series of the 2020s. Mike White’s writing, which finds comedy and dread in the smallest social humiliations, is the main attraction, along with superb ensemble casts. The reservation is that the anthology’s formula, with its teased death and slow-building tensions, becomes more predictable with each new season.

What is The White Lotus about?

Each season checks a new group of wealthy guests into a different branch of the White Lotus, a luxury resort chain. A death is teased in the opening minutes, and the rest of the season rewinds to the start of the holiday to reveal how things unravelled. Beneath the pools, spa treatments and sunsets, the guests and staff are wrestling with resentment, unhappy marriages, loneliness and the quiet cruelty of people who are used to being served.

The White Lotus was created by Mike White, who writes and directs the series, and it is an American production in English, streaming on HBO Max. This review covers the first three seasons, 21 episodes set in Hawaii, Sicily and Thailand. The series is ongoing, but each season tells a self-contained story, so you can start with any of them.

A murder mystery that is really about money

The death at the start of each season is a hook, and a clever one, but the whodunit is the least interesting part of the show. What White really cares about is status: who is serving whom, who feels entitled to what, and how money warps even the most intimate relationships. The resort setting is ideal for this, trapping a fixed cast in paradise and assigning everyone a precise place in the pecking order.

The series is equally sharp on the staff. Hotel workers perform deference while privately calculating their own survival, and some of the show’s most humane moments belong to the people paid to smile. The unsettling score and the camera’s habit of drifting away from human pettiness towards the ocean or jungle give every season an undertow of menace.

Casting as commentary

Each season assembles a knockout ensemble. Jennifer Coolidge’s Tanya, a lonely heiress whose wealth insulates her from almost everything except her own neediness, is the show’s tragicomic masterpiece, and Coolidge plays her with a wobbling sincerity that is both hilarious and heartbreaking. Murray Bartlett’s frazzled hotel manager dominates the first season with a performance of escalating desperation.

Later seasons bring fresh talent. Aubrey Plaza is superb as a sharp, suspicious wife among the guests in Sicily, while Walton Goggins and Jason Isaacs bring very different kinds of intensity to the Thailand chapter. The show thrives on watching gifted actors play people who are simultaneously sympathetic and appalling.

The risk of repetition

An anthology built on one repeatable trick invites diminishing returns, and at times The White Lotus feels as if it is executing its own formula. The slow first episodes of each season, the ominous hints and the carefully withheld morality can start to feel familiar. The third season in particular stretches its story over a longer running time than it needs. Even so, White’s dialogue remains more alive than most prestige drama, and each new location refreshes the experiment.

Who should watch The White Lotus?

It suits viewers who enjoy dark comedy, social satire and slow-burn mysteries, and anyone who likes character-driven ensemble drama. Each season runs six to eight episodes, so the whole series is manageable, and the seasons can be watched in any order. Expect strong language, frank sexual content and nudity, drug use and some violence; it is firmly for adults.

For more comedy with a sting:

• Poker Face, a mystery series that also rotates ensembles of guest stars and enjoys puncturing privilege.
• BoJack Horseman, an animated satire of wealth and fame with a similarly bleak, funny heart.

The verdict

The White Lotus is a brilliant, merciless comedy of manners that turns a luxury holiday into a study of class, desire and desperation. Its formula has grown familiar, but Mike White’s writing and the superb casting make every season a vacation you cannot look away from.

Rating: 4.5/5