The White Lotus is off to a shaky start

The White Lotus, now back for a third series, could perhaps be best described as Death in Paradise for posh people. Most obviously, this is because its plots revolve around murders in an idyllic location – only with a far bigger budget, a much starrier cast and several episodes per story. But there’s also the fact that it follows the same pattern every time.

Most popular

Freddy Gray

The cruellest thing about Trump vs Zelensky? Trump’s right

Sam Olsen

Why Trump doesn’t see Putin as a real threat

Brendan O’Neill

Hamas’s final torment of the Bibas family

So it was that season three began this week, rather like its predecessors, with some lovely scenery, a dead body and a caption reading ‘One week earlier’. After that, we duly watched a bunch of rich, good-looking Americans arriving at a luxury White Lotus resort where they were welcomed by the resolutely smiling staff and a nervous manager, before gazing round and marvelling at the beauty of it all.

Following Hawaii and Sicily, the marvelling this time was directed at the beauty of Thailand, where the programme’s creator, writer and director Mike White turns his winningly satirical eye on the cult and jargon of wellness. Not that his latest group of guests needed much encouragement to ‘focus on self-care’ – because, again like their predecessors, they’re a complacently entitled lot. Indeed, when it comes to characterisation, the new series seems like variations on a well-established theme – not all of them major.

Jason Isaacs, for example, plays a driven plutocrat, somewhat incongruously called Timothy, who’s trying (and failing) to put work out of his mind temporarily in favour of some quality time with his wife and three children of varying degrees of social awkwardness. So far, these children appear to have only a single trait each, with one son priapic, the other introverted and the daughter moonily spiritual.