The White Lotus: Season 2 Review

The agonising excruciation is back.

The second season of award-winning The White Lotus, debuting on Soho and Neon on Mondays, is more of the same from writer / director Mike White - but set this time on a bigger scale.

Heading to Sicily and the awfulness of those converging on the stunning vistas, White subtly brings out the societal politics and underhand behaviour of the entitled once again.

This time, it's Sicily's White Lotus hotel, run by the truly awful resort manager, Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore) that comes in for the scrutiny after the guests assemble in its halls.

Starting with a similar coda to the first season, a body emerges in the waters of the Ionian sea, discovered by a guest who just moments before has been extoling its virtues to the newcomers, and who perilously declares the resort is "to die for".

Soon, more bodies emerge and a full scale emergency is underway - with Valentina decrying "The ocean is not our property. We can’t be responsible for what happens in the Ionian Sea."

A quick flashback in time and the potential corpses are assembled - from the return of Jennifer Coolidge's Tanya to new couples Daphne (Meghann Fahy) and husband Cameron (Theo James), Ethan (Will Sharpe) and his employment lawyer wife Harper (Aubrey Plaza) to the varying horiness of three generations of the Di Grasso family (F Murray Abraham, Michael Imperioli and Adam DeMarco).

As if that's not enough, Haley Lu Richardson's Portia, Tanya's assistant, is also bubbling around the hotel, banished to her room by Tanya herself - but determined to get a holiday and laid while there.

It's a big ensemble for White to juggle and in episode one alone, he manages to do it well enough, giving each their own moment of horribleness to satiate the odds that they're the ones to end up in the sea.

While it initially pales with the first series, and Valentina feels more of a caricature of a ghastly stuck up Italian rather than the almost more grounded approach of Season one's Armond,  unfortunate head of the Lotus stuck in the hurricane, there's a bit more subtlety at play in season two that's worth checking in for.

You won't be mistaken for feeling a sense of deja vu as these awful people going about their day-to-days, and diss everyone they feel is below them or jealous of - it's fair to say there's more of a feeling season 1 had a stronger more vicious edge and you'll struggle to shake the nagging concerns you've seen this once already.

The pleasures come from the barbs at a dinner, in the interactions of the cast and in the writing when it fully lands. Sure, there feels like some stereotypes at play here and whether you'll care who the body belongs to is debatable in many ways, but The White Lotus is a cut above most other dramas at the moment.

Though whether a third outing is strictly necessary or thematically incisive enough remains to be seen.

The White Lotus airs on Soho on Mondays and streams on Neon.