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6 hours ago
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The White Lotus (Sky Atlantic/Now)
A Thousand Blows (Disney+)
Escaping Utopia (BBC Two) | iPlayer
It is time once more to book into a sumptuous hotel and watch the frightful, fragile rich have a very bad time. The third series of Mike White’s The White Lotus (Sky Atlantic/Now), largely set in Koh Samui, Thailand, arrives not with anything as vulgar and obvious as a bang; it’s more of a muggy, jet-lagged, overindulged stupor of jade-hued water, tensely chattering monkeys, Buddha statues, wellness treatments, digital detoxes and western holidaymakers for whom everything good in life is lavishly on tap, but will never be deemed quite enough.
As in the first two series, it isn’t long before a dead body (whose?) is discovered and the action flashes back through the preceding days as we get to know the latest cohort of lost souls. US businessman Timothy (Jason Isaacs), sweating in his waffle bathrobe over potential ruin. His wife, Victoria, played by Parker Posey as a drawling, pill-popping nightmare. Their spiritual daughter (Sarah Catherine Hook) and sons, one of whom (Sam Nivola) is hiding secrets, while the other, sex-obsessed Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger – yes, son of Arnold), is Evil Jock 2.0, soon seen strutting around in the buff.
Elsewhere, a trio of backstabbing, midlife girlfriends (Carrie Coon, Michelle Monaghan, Leslie Bibb) air-kiss each other into oblivion (“To Thailand, to monkeys, to self-care”). Walton Goggins’s glowering older man fails to be cheered up by Aimee Lou Wood’s nu-hippy girlfriend (“You want to get into some Tantric later?”). A rare starburst of warmth is delivered by Tayme Thapthimthong’s security guard’s helpless crush on another hotel worker (Lalisa Manobal, AKA Lisa of K-pop girlband Blackpink). Some familiar faces appear: one can only spell trouble…
There’s no sugaring this pill: it’s hard not to miss series one/two queen Jennifer Coolidge as cray-cray socialite Tanya (no one rocks a muumuu and poolside day drinking quite like La Coolidge). And, from the six episodes I’ve seen, there are times when this outing feels like a slower, more laboured ride (the final two episodes have some explosive work to do).
But it’s still a treat. The signature White Lotus room service menu of wealth, decadence, ennui, greed, culture wars and vicious little nibbles at everything from religious tourism to older western guys in Thailand, labelled “LBHs” (losers back home). And, of course, sex, including (spoiler alert) nonchalant penis-flashing (good gracious, Mr Isaacs!), and, after the eye-popping gay sex scenes in the first two seasons, the suggestion of some ante-upping sexual transgression between siblings (I like to imagine White at his keyboard, guffawing: “That should really shake things up!”). With its witty, salty, amusing and badly behaved characters, yet again the central motif of The White Lotus is eat the rich and suck their bones clean. Bon appétit!
Over on Disney+ is A Thousand Blows, the new drama from Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders) loosely based on real-life and set in Victorian-era London’s East End. Stephen Graham plays Sugar Goodson, an old-school bare-knuckle boxer, and no one could accuse the actor of not shredding for the part. He prowls around the ring like an XL bully dog, arms like hams, emanating a convincing viciousness. Sugar disdains the vogue for “glove fighters” and Queensberry rules (there’s a busy subplot about the emergence of modern boxing), and has a penchant for sinking his teeth into adversaries.
His foes include Hezekiah Moscow (Small Axe’s Bafta-winning Malachi Kirby), a would-be lion tamer who has travelled from Jamaica and ends up in the ring with Sugar. Hezekiah threatens Sugar’s dominance, and they’re both in the life of Mary Carr, played by Erin Doherty of The Crown, who runs a notorious female pickpocketing gang called the Forty Elephants and has her eyes on bigger prizes.
A Thousand Blows presents a rough, dirty London of workhouses and racism, but peopled with characters of different ethnicities (a prominent Chinese character is played by Jason Tobin), strong women such as Mary (a flinty, uncompromising turn from Doherty) and so many side hustles that big acting forces appear in relatively minor roles: Ashley Walters as Hezekiah’s father in doom-drenched flashbacks; Daniel Mays as a ringmaster, all booming banter and mutton chops.
Despite Mary’s criminal gang, Knight’s latest drama isn’t remotely reminiscent of Peaky Blinders, and that’s fine. It’s good to see working-class stories told in different ways. However, the series struggles on two counts: it’s interesting to have three vivid personalities (Sugar, Hezekiah and Mary) give off main-character energy, but it also muddies the story. And mid-series on, the plotting starts to churn and flag (it turns out that another six-part instalment is imminent). When it comes into focus, A Thousand Blows is a full-blooded show, crackling with incident and fine performances.
There are times when it’s difficult to comprehend the events outlined in BBC Two’s chilling docuseries Escaping Utopia. It tells the story of Gloriavale, a religious cult in New Zealand founded in 1969 by Neville Cooper, known as Hopeful Christian, after a vision from God. It became an uber-patriarchal community of submissive women in long, Gilead-adjacent gowns, giving birth as frequently as possible. Gloriavale men wear normal clothes and have more freedom because, well, that’s God’s will – suck it up, ladies!
Gloriavale, still numbering about 600 residents, has been engulfed in litigation and allegations, still continuing and covering everything from sexual offences and child abuse to cruelty and workplace exploitation. In the 1990s, Cooper was found guilty of sexual offences but then released early from prison (he died in 2018). Those who left the cult (including one of Cooper’s sons) did so fearing divine wrath and the outside world. One young woman says: “I was like… I know how to make cheese, I don’t know who Taylor Swift is.”
Over three episodes, with intermittent dramatisation, this is a dark story of mass mind control, with relentless, horrific detail: Cooper insisting that children watch parents having sex to “learn” about it; a girl having her hymen broken with a wooden implement before her wedding night, and so much more. Television isn’t short of documentaries about cults, but this one is worth looking at.
Star ratings (out of five)
The White Lotus ★★★★
A Thousand Blows ★★★
Escaping Utopia ★★★★
What else I’m watching
Zero Day
(Netflix)
Robert De Niro stars as a former president brought out of retirement to protect America after a massive cyber-attack in this taut, topical conspiracy thriller. An impressive cast includes Jesse Plemons, Angela Bassett and Joan Allen.
Inside China: The Battle for Tibet
(Tonight, ITV1)
A hyper-tense documentary that goes undercover in Tibet to look into China’s growing control of the region.
Fleetwood Mac’s Songbird: Christine McVie
(BBC Two)
As part of a Fleetwood Mac celebration night, a poignant documentary tribute to the original songbird of the keyboards, the late, great Christine McVie, who died in 2022.
