Rich guests – including a spaced-out Jennifer Coolidge – rub shoulders with downtrodden workers on a holiday from hell, in Mike White’s superb satire about inequality
The White Lotus is Big Little Lies with another two and a half turns of the screw – an equally sumptuously set miniseries with a mystery fatality at its heart. But this time, its subject is the monstrousness of affluence rather than mere snobbery.
We open with newlywed Shane (Jake Lacy) batting away questions from a friendly couple in an airport departure lounge about where his wife is, as he gazes down at cargo labelled “Human remains” that is being loaded on to their flight. Then we flash back a week to his arrival (with his starry-eyed wife Rachel – Alexandra Daddario) at the exclusive White Lotus spa in Hawaii, as part of a similarly Waspy group of guests.
