The White Lotus returns: The rot is stronger than ever, but it’s feeling repetitive

This week’s streaming picks include the return of Mike White’s killer satire, an adaptation of the award-winning Invisible Boys, Netflix’s silliest reality show yet and the return of beloved comedy Abbott Elementary.

The White Lotus (season three, Binge) ★★★½

The industrious new season of Mike White’s black comedy of American insatiability is set at the Thai branch of the titular – and quite possibly cursed – resort chain. The focus of the luxury haven is wellness, with the guests being prescribed daily soothing treatments. The local staff, smiles permanently fixed, toil away on the wealthy guests, but it serves only to build anticipation for their downfall. The White Lotus is an existential demolition derby, and viewers have been primed for the most spectacular of crashes.

Natasha Rothwell returns as spa manager Belinda in season three of The White Lotus.

While the HBO series is essentially an anthology – season one’s Hawaiian spa manager, Belinda (Natasha Rothwell), features again via a professional development exchange – there’s a growing inevitability to the show. Once more, a shocking event is the epilogue before the story jumps back a week to the guest’s arrival. Watching the cracks start to show remains a delicious process, with individual scenes of telling insight or shocking revelations, but there are also points where it feels like a routine.

Season one dissected white privilege, season two sexual politics, and now the lure of self-deceit alongside reinvention looms. You study these newcomers like it’s a form guide: who will lose? The Ratliff family, led by financier Timothy (Jason Isaacs) and his snobby wife Victoria (Parker Posey, getting wild with a Southern accent), are a mass of potential failings – oldest son Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger) is a strutting bro who needs his comeuppance.

White does his best to sympathetically work Thai characters into the intertwining plots, showing how the staff are vulnerable to the guest’s whims, but he’s more into teasing out the false bonhomie between a trio of long-time female friends – played by Carrie Coon, Michelle Monaghan, and Leslie Bibb – on a girls’ trip.

The creator also benefits from a sharp eye for casting, with the rattlesnake energy Walton Goggins brings to his jaded guest, Rick, new to the show’s dynamic, especially when contrasted with the character’s younger British girlfriend, Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood).

Walton Goggins as Rick Hatchett and Aimee Lou Wood as Chelsea in season three of The White Lotus.

Trump is barely mentioned in the six episodes (of eight) previewed, but criminality is a recurring reality. Good intentions remain a flaking façade, but beneath it, the rot is stronger than ever.

“You can escape the karmic cycle,” a therapist assures one guest, but The White Lotus is locked into its own spiral. There are hints of repetition now, no matter how sublime or excruciating the punctuation is. This might be the first season of the show where you feel as if it’s marking time, even as the twists take hold. That’s what happens when audiences repeatedly crave the same soothing treatment. From Monday, February 17.

Invisible Boys (Stan*) ★★★½

Joseph Zada as Charlie Roth in new Australian series Invisible Boys.

In this Australian series about a quartet of gay young men, the choice is to break free or be left broken. Adapted by director Nicholas Verso (Crazy Fun Park) from Holden Sheppard’s award-winning 2019 novel of the same name, Invisible Boys is about the struggle to make sense of a life that’s been lived in the shadows or even denial. It’s a whiplash narrative of highs and lows, told with a welcome frankness in regard to sexual discovery and emotional need.

Set in the regional West Australian city of Geraldton in 2017, the young adult show establishes a handful of high school stories that begin to overlap. Charlie (Joseph Zada) is the emo musician who comes out as an act of defiance, while Matt (Joe Klocek) is the farmer’s son who offers him stability. Zeke (Aydan Calafiore) is the A-student chafing under conservative parents while strutting Indigenous footy star Kade (Zach Blampied) has panic attacks when he even contemplates being gay.

There are moments of levity and flashes of desire, but there’s none of the youthful insouciance the queer students in Heartbreak High have. These teenagers feel trapped, wary of betrayal; the consolation of a supporting text message is so strong the conversation takes physical form. The leads capture the extreme highs and lows of adolescence as the half-hour episodes offer instruction and hard-fought hope. Uplifting endings aren’t guaranteed.

Celebrity Bear Hunt (Netflix)

Celebrity Bear Hunt (from right) Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, Leomie Anderson, Mel B and Bear Grylls.

Important distinction: this is not the stupidest show Netflix has produced, but it is certainly the silliest. Mixing I’m a Celebrity… Hunted and a schoolyard game of chasey, this reality competition has survivalist Bear Grylls pursuing a group of predominantly British celebrities – Spice Girl Mel B, Kate Moss’s half-sister – through the Costa Rican jungle. The contestants are mostly in on the joke, but Grylls, a former member of the British SAS, fervently commits to the routine, whether it’s stalking through the jungle with a camera crew in tow or building elaborate traps.

Abbott Elementary (Disney+)

Abbott Elementary creator and star Quinta Brunson.Credit: Ser Baffo/ABC via AP

Just a reminder that Quinta Brunson’s primary school teachers comedy is the best American sitcom going. The episodes unfold with well-oiled precision, but the show still has a liveliness, warmth, and sense of discovery that keeps it fresh. For those who’ve been waiting, episode nine of the new season (Volunteers) is the crossover with the reprobates from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It’s a lot of fun, and later in the year, the Abbott Elementary staff will be making a return visit to Paddy’s Pub in the Always Sunny universe.

NCIS: Sydney (Paramount+)

William McInnes as forensic pathologist Dr Roy Penrose and Mavournee Hazel as forensic pathologist Bluebird “Blue”′ Gleeson in NCIS: Sydney.

Returning with a tense conclusion to last season’s cliffhanger, the local spin-off from the long-running American military investigation procedural continues to showcase Sydney, keep Australian talent employed, and maintain a tidy line in streamlined action sequences and collegial humour. I prefer the quirkier case-of-the-week episodes to the high-stakes international intrigue storylines, but the Australian-American cast handles both with ease. Now the series is screening on American network television, all those extras decked out as Sydney Swans fans can help make up for last year’s grand-final collapse.

British Academy Film Awards (BritBox)

David Tennant returns to host the BAFTA Film Awards.Credit: BAFTA via Getty Images

Vivien Leigh was the host in 1956, the first year that British Academy Film Awards were broadcast in 1956, but it’s Rivals star David Tennant who once again has the gig at the Royal Festival Hall this year. The night may offer some clarity in a Hollywood awards season where there is no overwhelming favourite. Emilia Pérez, which has recently endured a torrent of bad press related to star Karla Sofía Gascón’s social media history, has the most nominations, followed by Conclave, The Brutalist and The Substance.

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