The White Lotus, Series 3, Sky Atlantic review - hit formula with few surprises but a new bewitching soundtrack

The return of Mike White’s hit series can be celebrated for one major reason: its extraordinary music. That may sound like a minor reason, but this third iteration of the show confirms that the show's sound world is key to its success.

Composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer has, in each season, created uniquely bewitching sounds that are variously sinister, playful and melodramatic. Inventively using pan pipes and flutes plus a menagerie of feral noises and vocals, fleshed out with synthesizers, this audio backdrop mirror the location, its fauna as well as its musical traditions. Over the opening credits the score each season has been paired with paintings of betrayal, extreme sex and violence, sea monsters and natural disasters; then the orchestration is skilfully deployed to fashion perfect snippets of incidental music.  

Thailand, the setting for season three, is a gift to this composer. Monkey sounds scamper through the score, much as they inhabit the gardens of the White Lotus resort hotel, their chatter becoming a key theme of both music and dialogue. Strange instruments twang and clang like a kind of Thai steampunk, alongside saccharine pop ballads and ominous drumming. The result is a satirical chorus that works as a running commentary on these mere mortals on their ship of fools, mocking their wealth and privilege and how easily they are corrupted.

And that’s where the new series disappoints a little: it's so much like the previous ones. Only the specific ambience has shifted, from the salty-fruity tang of Maui and sun-baked excesses of Taormina to the steamy luxe foliage of Thailand, a place of moonlit waters and shadowy interiors. After a short opener where violence is taking place offscreen and something indiscernible floats into the frame, as usual we move back a week to the halcyon days before the new guests' expensive Eden started to sour, primed to notice behaviour that might turn homicidal, intentions that aren’t honourable, friendships that will fray, guns that might fire. Who are the bad guys, who will be the victim(s)?

White – who created, wrote and directed the show – seems less subtle in revving up the plot this time, impatient to get to the nub of things, his brushstrokes a bit broader.

From the outset he makes it clear that the smug, well-heeled American family arriving on the boat are not as upright or contented as they would like to appear. Alongside them is a trio of blondes, youthful friends reconnecting in successful middle age, who have overlooked the perils of travelling as a threesome, where two together will inevitably bitch about the absent third. There is an older man with an oddball younger partner, staff with their own romances and dramas, an eccentric general manager, a criminal element. And, as with season two, there are overlaps with the previous season’s cast, two of whom return; one is Belinda (Natasha Rothwell), the spa worker from season one. (Those who haven’t been watching would be wise to start from the beginning.)

Luckily, this cast are very entertaining. The upscale American family is led by stressed financier Tim Ratliff (an impressive Jason Isaacs, pictured above) and his languid southern belle wife (Parker Posey), accompanied by their three children: future master of the universe Saxon (Patrick Schwarzenegger, son of Arnie), wiry high school senior Lochlan (Sam Nivola, son of Alessandro and Emily Mortimer) and daughter Piper (Sarah Catherine Hook), whose interest in studying Buddhism has led them all to this part of the world. Tim becomes a focal point, his career woes driving him increasingly nuts, his phone surrendered to a stern Australian hotel worker armed with a "digital detox bag”. Posey’s Victoria, whose bizarre Texan accent is almost too laidback to pronounce all but one-syllable words, is a lorazepam-dependent neurotic who’s convinced she and her family are utterly normal. 

Saxon is a variant of the Ivy League bully, advising his smarter younger bro to play a numbers game with “pussy” and to chat up as many potential victims as he can. He can weaponise a blender by making noisy protein shakes, oblivious to all around him, and seems ripe for a comedown. His sister is the mainly sane one, unwilling to indulge in all the BS her family holds dear. But her desire for spiritual fulfilment is also a reflection of her over-privileged status. Her mother is terrified she will end up in a “Boodist” cult, “banging a bongo in Times Square”.The three blondes have less financial kudos. The queen bee is 45-year-old TV star Jaclyn (Michelle Monaghan, pictured above, centre, with Bibb, left, and Coon), married to a man 10 years younger and still aiming to compete. Laurie (Carrie Coon) is a corporate lawyer desperate for a promotion that will help her pay her palimony and showing signs of a drink problem; Kate (Lesley Bibb) is an apple-pie-perfect homemaker who lives in Austin, Texas and has the soundest moral code if not the biggest bank balance, or brain.    

Further down the social scale are the May and December couple, Rick (Walton Goggins, pictured below with Aimee Lou Wood) and his girlfriend Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), a perky zodiac-obsessed former yoga teacher who’s half his age but convinced even so that they are “soulmates” with an indelible spiritual connection. He, though, seems rootless, jobless and immensely irritated by her nonstop prattling. Yet Chelsea regularly seems the most perceptive person around. Goggins, usually a standout hillbilly gangster or bent cop, is a nice surprise here, mellower and even poignant, a lost boy brooding on his past. 

At the bottom of the pile are the staff, mostly presented as nice guys, especially Gaitok the security man (Tayme Thapthimthong) and his beautiful love interest Mook (Lalisa Manobal), who dances in the nightly hotel entertainments. Dodgier is Valentin from Vladivostock (Areas Federavicius), a smooth-talking healer; weirder is the German general manager, Fabian (Christian Friedel, unrecognisable as The Zone of Interest’s Rudolf Hoss), whose fussy self-absorption is almost comical. 

Remove the music and this brew would still look good, but its vital mocking tone, distancing you from the characters, would be lost. What's left would be a racier Midsomer Murders mixed with travel porn. But the beguiling soundtrack keeps you coming back, driving things forward or stopping abruptly for some metal-stringed pizzicato that tells you something wicked this way comes. Even if it’s just a large exotic lizard skittering along a pathway. White should probably hang up his computer bag now, his formula played to the max, but will he?

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