The Five Star Weekend

Following the fatal car crash of her husband, Hollis, a TV chef and influencer organises an escape weekend at her Nantucket holiday home with her four best friends (or, more accurately, three best friends and a possibly stalkery online pal).

I was kind of expecting a semi-horror “rich people having a rotten time” but it didn’t turn out that way (there was even a knowing nod to that genre when the daughter, on finding out about the fan guest, says “Oh my God, you’re all going to wake up without your kidneys!”).

Instead we got quite a sweet tale of growth, redemption and change. Each of the women were changed in some greater or lesser fashion (apart from the online pal really) and it was mostly an uplifting story. The main issue for me is that despite all the necessary back story and the incidents of the weekend itself, there just wasn’t enough here to fill the eight episodes and we the audience were desperate for the characters to encounter the events that we knew were coming! There were a couple of blind alleys where we did not get the payoff we anticipated, so it wasn’t totally predictable. The director was also lazy, or just didn’t care but used identical aerial shots whether the ladies were coming or going into town – guess those drone shots don’t come cheap so you have to make the most of them!

Interesting to see up in Nantucket and the story was enjoyable but would have been equally so told over six episodes, I feel.