↩ Accueil

Vue lecture

From irritating storylines to behind-the-scenes bust-ups: how The White Lotus went off a cliff

Predictable plot twists, dodgy pacing and wasted talent … season three of the HBO hit sadly didn’t get anywhere near the heights of its two well-loved predecessors. Here’s where it went wrong

This article contains spoilers for the final episode of the White Lotus season three. Do not read on if you have not seen episode eight.

In the opening scene of The White Lotus finale, a Buddhist monk warned: “There is no such thing as resolution.” Perhaps it was a warning ahead of a disappointing denouement.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: HBO

© Photograph: HBO

  •  

Your Friends & Neighbors: Jon Hamm’s addictive turn as a gentleman thief is his best role since Mad Men

This blackly comic, propulsively fun tale of a disgraced hedge fund manager turned crook is all about the one-time Don Draper. He lifts the whole thing

Jon Hamm has one of the great TV faces. Square-jawed and ruggedly suave, it’s the face of a matinee idol with a dangerous edge. The quiff is well-coiffed but grey-flecked. That Marlboro Man chin looks unshaven by lunchtime. Those hooded eyes have a weary, lounge lizard quality. One of his first Hollywood parts was a 1997 episode of Ally McBeal, where he played the aptly named “Gorgeous Guy at Bar”. A decade later, Hamm became the alpha face of a certain prestige drama. Ad Men, was it? Mad Dogs? Something like that.

Your Friends & Neighbors (Apple TV+, 11 April) is a fitting new vehicle for Hamm’s slippery good looks. The launch episode is bookended by shots of his big, mildly befuddled face in screen-filling closeup. This show knows exactly what’s it’s doing. It is blackly comic, frothily fun and highly moreish.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Jessica Kourkounis/APPLE TV+

© Photograph: Jessica Kourkounis/APPLE TV+

  •  

From gun-toting monkeys to triple homicides: the wildest theories for the White Lotus finale

Will Gaitok go rogue? Might there be an incest-related shooting? Could primates do it? Here’s a rundown of the top rumours around the last episode’s looming death (or deaths)

It all began with a dead body, before the HBO hit flashed back to a week earlier. Now satirical spa drama The White Lotus is set to solve all its mysteries in the third season finale, titled Amor Fati (which translate as “love of fate”, Latin fans).

The Thailand-set series opened with Zion’s meditation session being interrupted by gunfire. As the panicking student waded through the resort’s ponds to look for his mother, Belinda, an unidentified corpse floated past him face-down. Who was it? Who pulled the trigger? And will anyone squat over a suitcase?

Continue reading...

© Photograph: HBO

© Photograph: HBO

  •  

‘I’m welling up thinking about it’: how a comedian used humour to beat trauma – and made it into a podcast

After Mark O’Sullivan’s My Sexual Abuse: The Sitcom helped him move past his childhood trauma, he’s launched a tearful, joyful new show – about creativity’s power to rebuild lives

Mark O’Sullivan is still buzzing from winning a Royal Television Society (RTS) award for his documentary, My Sexual Abuse: The Sitcom. “I’m grinning like a mid-party Michael Gove,” he chuckles. “It’s lovely for it to be recognised as an important and powerful piece. I just got a message from someone I knew years ago to say they’d seen the news about the award, watched the show and finally felt able to say they were also abused. That moved me to tears. Again!”

Comedian and writer O’Sullivan – co-star of cult Channel 4 sitcom Lee & Dean and creator of ITV teen drama Tell Me Everything – is now launching the weekly podcast Making Lemonade. It explores the healing power of creating something positive out of negative experiences, after his own life was radically transformed by his deeply personal film, confronting the abuse he suffered as a child. When he was 12, O’Sullivan began to be sexually assaulted by a member of his extended family. He reported it to the police when he was in his 30s. The culprit was convicted, imprisoned and has since died. Last May’s Channel 4 documentary followed O’Sullivan’s attempt to make mirth from what he endured, by creating an 18-minute TV comedy about his experiences, which was available online on Channel 4. It made for audacious TV, by turns heartbreaking and darkly hilarious.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Channel 4/Jack Barnes

© Photograph: Channel 4/Jack Barnes

  •