8 Shows to Watch If You Love The White Lotus
8 Shows to Watch If You Love The White Lotus
HBO's The White Lotus was one of the best and most surprising new shows of last year. The pitch-perfect satire blended cringe comedy with biting commentary on class and privilege—and did so against a truly stunning backdrop of Hawaiian vistas, which made for especially welcome viewing at a time when most of our travel plans had been severely curtailed.
Later this month, the show will return for its second season in an anthology style, meaning it'll follow an entirely new cast of characters at another White Lotus resort location, this one in Sicily, Italy. Aubrey Plaza, Wil Sharpe, Meghann Fahy and Theo James will star as two couples vacationing together, leading a stacked cast which also includes F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hollander, Haley Lu Richardson, and Michael Imperioli. Jennifer Coolidge will also reprise her season 1 role, but she's (as far as we know) the only returning player.
As you eagerly await the season 2 premiere on October 30, here are eight more shows that may be up your street if you can't get enough of The White Lotus.
1) Enlightened
If you missed this objectively excellent HBO drama back when it aired in 2011, you're not alone—despite starring Laura Dern in one of the best performances of her career, Enlightened somehow flew under the radar at the time, and ended up being canceled after just two seasons. But this should be number one on your list if you're craving more White Lotus, because Enlightened shares the same creator and lead writer, Mike White. Dern plays a high-powered and self-destructive corporate executive who's forced to reevaluate her life after a nervous breakdown.
2) The Chair
This hilarious and addictive Netflix series is to academia as The White Lotus is to the one percent, satirizing the pettiness and inequality of campus life at a prestigious university. Sandra Oh stars as Dr. Ji-Yoon Kim (Sandra Oh), who is newly appointed as the first ever female chair of the English department—and soon discovers just what a poisoned chalice she's been handed.
3) Severancce
This breakout hit from Apple TV+ centers on a deliciously neat sci-fi premise: what if "work/life balance" was a literal divide? When employees at the mysterious Lumon Industries arrive to work each morning, they forget everything about their lives outside the building—when they leave for the night, the reverse happens. The psychological and ethical implications of this are explored to chilling effect in Severance, which will return for a much-anticipated second season in 2023.
4) Little Fires Everywhere
This adaptation of Celeste Ng's New York Times bestseller is a very different kind of meditation on white privilege and class dynamics. Set in the affluent small town of Shaker Heights, Ohio, Little Fires Everywhere follows the complex and ultimately disastrous collision of two families: the seemingly picture-perfect Richardsons (led by Reese Witherspoon's Elena) and free-spirited single mom Mia Warren (Kerry Washington).
5) Big Little Lies
Just like The White Lotus, Big Little Lies is a juicy, character-driven murder mystery drama set in an irresistible oceanfront location, in which gossip and class warfare heighten the stakes. Big Little Lies also explores of trauma and domestic violence with unexpected nuance—and while its second season is far weaker than its first, the addition of Meryl Streep is reason enough to keep watching.
6) Nine Perfect Strangers
Set at an exclusive wellness retreat that caters to wealthy, stressed out urbanites, Hulu's star-studded Nine Perfect Strangers may seem almost too similar to The White Lotus on paper. But the series is more of a psychological mystery than a satire, as the resort's leader Masha (Nicole Kidman) gradually reveals herself to be on a very different kind of mission than the "healing and transformation" she promises to guests.
7) The Resort
This Peacock gem has been quietly gathering buzz since its debut in the summer of 2022. Cristin Milioti and William Jackson Harper star as a married couple whose anniversary getaway takes a dark turn, thanks to a years-old crime which gets resurfaced in a strange and surreal way. What starts out as a murder mystery becomes a multi-generational romance that incorporates magical realism and sci-fi elements. It's absolutely impossible to predict where this series is going from one moment to the next, and it's a joy.
8) Succession
Before The White Lotus, this impeccably written family dramedy had already cemented HBO as the place to go for incisive, devastating sendups of the one percent. Succession follows the obscenely wealthy Roy family, and the power struggle that ensues after patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox) suffers a health crisis. The Roys would never lower themselves to staying at a resort, but they're otherwise pretty comparable to the oblivious and insufferable clientele at the White Lotus—and yet, as the show goes on, you'll inevitably start rooting for them despite yourself.
These series will help tide you over until the HBO drama returns for season 2 in October.