Sublime TV... but here’s why I’m furious with White Lotus
The White Lotus Sky Atlantic, Monday ★★★★★ DNA Journey I TV, Friday ★★★★★
The second series of The White Lotus began last week, and I couldn’t be more furious about it. They sent reviewers five of the seven episodes in advance. I gorged on them in one sitting last weekend as I am ill-disciplined and love this show so much. I could watch the final two when the series landed on Sky on Monday, I reasoned. But come Monday it became apparent: this would be playing weekly rather than as a box set. December 5 – that’s when I’ll be able to watch the sixth episode. I won’t know who’s dead or why until it’s practically Christmas. I suppose there is a lesson in there somewhere. Stop watching so much TV and get a life? I do try sometimes, but then I remember that The Yorkshire Vet is on.
Written and directed by Mike White, the first series was a satire of the rich on holiday in Hawaii and it won a hundred Emmys, or something like that. It’s even a term that’s entered the language. ‘We thought of going to Cape Verde but decided it would be too White Lotus,’ I’ve heard it said. And you know why I’ve heard it said? Because it was me.
The second series is set in Sicily, at a fivestar hotel perched on a cliff with stunning, panoramic views of the Ionian Sea. This also opens with the discovery of a dead body, and it’s intimated that there might even be multiple dead bodies. Then we spool back to a week earlier and the new guests arriving.
They’re all fantastically wealthy but this is less about that and less about class and race. White has cleverly reframed this outing. Passion, jealousy, betrayal, sex as transactional. That’s what this is about. I think we know as much when one couple asks about the testa di moro (ceramic head statue) in their room and a staff member explains that, as legend has it, a Moor came to Sicily in the 11th Century and seduced a local girl who then discovered he was married and chopped his head off. This is what we’re dealing with.
The first episode is necessarily the slowest. You can’t start a game of chess until all the pieces are in place. We meet the guests. The only returning character is Jennifer Coolidge’s monstrously tragic Tanya McQuoid, the heiress who has now married Greg (Jon Gries) from series one. This seems to have been a bad move. Oh God, the macaroons. But just when you feel most sorry for her, and she’s at her most tragic, she’ll do something monstrous like consign her assistant to her room, for the whole week, because Greg doesn’t want her there. Oh, Tanya.
Elsewhere we have Cameron (Theo James) and Daphne (Meghann Fahy), who are on holiday with another couple, Ethan (Will Sharpe) and Harper (Aubrey Plaza). Cameron and Daphne don’t watch the news, don’t read books, can’t keep their hands off each other. Harper, a serious-minded employment lawyer, hates them. Ethan tries to make good by saying he does sometimes watch Ted Lasso. ‘So likeable, right?’ says Cameron. ‘I don’t watch it,’ snaps Harper. This will have you on edge right from the off. It’s like watching a pan that you know will boil over.
Finally, there are three generations of American men who have come to investigate their Sicilian roots: grandfather Bert (F. Murray Abraham), his son Dominic (Michael Imperioli, Christopher from The Sopranos!) and his grandson Albie (Adam DiMarco). Dominic is estranged from his wife due to multiple infidelities. Bert pervs over young women. Dominic tells him to knock it off: ‘You’re 80 years old. You think you have a chance with these women?’ ‘I get older,’ Bert replies, ‘but the women I desire remain young… you can relate to that.’ This is as toxic as ever, there are terrific lines throughout, and now it’s all set up to be magnificent. Episodes two to five certainly are. I can’t speak for episode six or the dénouement. Regrettably.
Genealogy shows, of which there are now several, can be much of a muchness, but occasionally something truly surprising and fascinating is revealed. My favourite of all time was Kim Cattrall’s Who Do You Think You Are?, which was even better than Danny Dyer’s. (Look it up.) ITV’s version is DNA Journey, which oddly always features two celebrities, meaning one has to sit there like a lemon while it’s the other’s turn. But this week it was Alison Steadman and Larry Lamb, who starred in Gavin & Stacey together, and it was one of the surprising, fascinating ones. (For Steadman, that is.)
I don’t know if I should say what she discovered about her father, Percy. Maybe not. Maybe it could be construed as a spoiler. So all I’ll say is that she discovered something about Percy that maybe Percy didn’t even know. There’s a visit to the Isle of Man, a visit to a grave, and it was all terribly affecting as she tried to get her head round it.
Lamb, who found out he’s a bit Jewish (hooray!), proved a wonderful friend. Don’t think of it as having lost one grandmother, he told her. Think of it as having gained a second. You got it yet?