When you see a show with a cast as stellar as the one in Peacock’s The Five Star Weekend, you get fooled. All of these actors that you love must make for some powerful drama, some funny comedy and some fine acting, right? But what ends up happening is that at least a few of the cast members are underserved, and the writing becomes messy. That’s what this critic saw with this series.
Opening Shot: As “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” plays, we see a woman making cookies, pies, and other holiday goodies.
The Gist: Hollis Shaw (Jennifer Garner) is a food blogger who has written cookbooks and has a sizable social media following, and she is making videos of all of the things she makes during her favorite time of year. But then two police officers come to the door to tell her that her husband Matthew (Josh Hamilton) has been in an accident and didn’t survive.
Six months later, Hollis is still struggling to manage her grief; during a Today segment with Jenna Bush Hager, for instance, a simple question from Jenna leads Hollis to mention Matthew and start sobbing on-air.
Her agent Chelsea (Vella Lovell) tells her that she needs to relax, perhaps have a girls’ weekend with friends. She even passes along an idea she heard to invite friends from different phases of life. When Hollis’ daughter Caroline (Harlow Jane) turns down an offer from her mother to spend a weekend at their house on Nantucket, Hollis decides to do just that.
She calls her college buddy Dru-Ann Jones (Regina Hall), who has recently been “cancelled” on social media for saying that her professional soccer-playing client should “suck it up” and play instead of taking a game off. Her childhood friend Tatum McKenzie (Chloë Sevigny) just got a biopsy to see if a lump she found on her breast is malignant. Brooke Kirtley (D’Arcy Carden) was “mom friends” with Hollis, and she talks a blue streak when she’s nervous. Finally, Gigi Ling (Gemma Chan), an airline pilot, is one of Hollis’ social media followers; they’ve never met in person but seemed to connect and bond online after Matthew’s death.
All of the women have their secrets and issues — Gigi’s secret is a big one — but they all seem to get along well after they arrive on Friday; even Caroline surprises her mom and shows up. There are also some bits of jealousy between them, especially because none of them seem to know who Gigi is or why she was invited. But, more than anything, Hollis wonders if this whole weekend was a bad idea.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by Bekah Brunstetter and based on the novel by Elin Hilderbrand, The Five Star Weekend feels like a bit of a cross between The Perfect Couple and Virgin River.
Our Take: There is certainly tension and conflict in The Five Star Weekend, but in the first episode, that tension and conflict is exceedingly low-key. The direction the first episode tries to go into is more of a feelgood one, which really bored us to tears, despite the stellar cast.
There’s not a lot about this story that I haven’t seen in other recent shows that feature sweeping vacation vistas and luxury living. Sure, no one’s getting murdered in this one, and the idea that Hollis is bringing in friends from her different phases in life holds some intrigue, but the idea doesn’t really hold together, at least in this limited-series format.
Hollis is defined by her Martha Stewart-esque ability to make everything elegant and perfect. Of course, this is covering a deep wound she hasn’t given the chance to heal, and not just because she suddenly lost her husband. She also knows that things between her and Matthew weren’t great when he died, which is a guilt she stuffs pretty deep down in her psyche. But when she tells this to Gigi, it also triggers her, because Gigi has something to do with that state of unrest in Hollis’ marriage when Matthew died.
But the others’ issues seem to vary in importance. Tatum’s is the most urgent, given it’s a health issue, but it does seem like most of the conflict we’re seeing is how each of them feel about how their relationships with Hollis took a turn because of life’s ups and downs. That gets old after a while.
What I’m wondering, though, is how much of this series is going to be about the conflict and how much of it is going to be about Hollis getting her verve for life back, especially when her high-school boyfriend Jack (Timothy Olyphant) comes back into her life. The more the scales are tipped to the feelgood side, the less interesting it’s going to be.
Performance Worth Watching: It feels like Chloë Sevigny’s Tatum is given the most emotional baggage to deal with at the start of the series. And it’s not just about her health; it’s also about how she and Hollis were essentially sisters when they were kids but have drifted apart since then.
Sex And Skin: None in the first episode.
Parting Shot: We see Gigi curled up next to a bed in one of the bedrooms. She’s in mourning, too.
Sleeper Star: Judy Greer is Electra, a Nantucket friend of Hollis’ who also seems to be arival of Brooke. Rob Huebel plays Brooke’s loyal husband Charlie, and David Denman is Tatum’s supportive husband Kyle.
Most Pilot-y Line: “Yes, this is an outside hat, you’re right,” Brooke says as Dru-Ann stares at her big floppy hat. I normally like D’Arcy Carden’s penchant for playing flop-sweaty characters, but Brooke seems especially sad in this series, especially given the secret she’s keeping.
Our Call: STREAM IT, though this critic has a lot of reservations about The Five Star Weekend. I like the cast and how they interact with each other, but a series like this doesn’t need a whole lot of edginess to be entertaining. Unfortunately, this series has so little edge that it might struggle at times to hold viewers’ interest.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
