This is going to sound like an odd way to praise a television show, but it’s how I feel, so here goes: I’m so glad “The Five-Star Weekend” doesn’t have a dead body. Ever since “Big Little Lies” started the trend in 2017 and “The White Lotus” kicked it into overdrive three years later, prestige television about affluent people in beautiful locations has come with a lethal caveat. Partly a hook (as if the scenery and stars aren’t enough), partly a karmic comeuppance (we can’t bear to watch these people enjoy their riches undisturbed), a suspicious death is the unwritten rule of otherwise escapist entertainment. Even “The Perfect Couple,” the first major series to be adapted from the works of “The Five-Star Weekend” author Elin Hilderbrand, featured murder as a crucial component of its New England destination wedding.
“The Five-Star Weekend” is not immune to soapy twists, and the story does take place in the aftermath of a profound loss. But there’s no mystery surrounding the tragedy confronting food influencer Hollis Shaw (Jennifer Garner, also an executive producer), nor some deceitful killer waiting to claim responsibility for Hollis losing her husband in a crushingly mundane car accident six months prior to the titular getaway. Instead, “The Five-Star Weekend” deals with the everyday burden of medium-term grief, and on the complex relationships between Hollis and the friends she invites to her childhood home on Nantucket so they can help her cope. Freed from the burden of seeding clues or inserting red herrings, “The Five-Star Weekend” can dig into the nuances of platonic bonds and midlife reinvention among its central group of middle-aged women.
