The Five Star Weekend Review: Jennifer Garner Hosts A Wine Mom Getaway That's More Mild Than Wild
At first glance, Peacock's new limited series "The Five Star Getaway" (debuting this Thursday) looks like it'll slot in right into the ever-expanding Wine Mom Mystery genre, gathering an all-star cast of ladies for a twisted tale of murder, sex, and secrets. But after watching the first three episodes, I'm still waiting for the drama to kick in. Exceedingly mild and very low-stakes, "The Five Star Weekend" is like a Wine Mom Mystery without the mystery — a pleasant snooze, but a snooze nonetheless.
Based on the Elin Hilderbrand bestseller, "The Five Star Weekend" stars Jennifer Garner as Hollis, a food celebrity who makes picture-perfect pies and cookies for her followers to drool over. Her life comes to a screeching halt, though, when her husband is killed in an accident, and she decides to invite four friends from different phases of her life to her gorgeous Nantucket home to help her process her grief, which is still very much on the surface. (As one friend wonders: "Is this a party, or an identity crisis?")
The writing doesn't cut as deeply as Big Little Lies or The White Lotus
Her friend group is an impressive list of familiar faces: Regina Hall plays Dru-Ann, a sports agent with serious drive, with Chloë Sevigny as Tatum, a caustic childhood friend who's worried about getting results from a cancer screening. "The Good Place" alum D'Arcy Carden plays goofball mom friend Brooke, and Gemma Chan pops in as Hollis' fan/follower Gigi, who arrives as a stranger to the other women. They don't all get along — old grudges still feel fresh, years later — and Hollis' insistence that they stick to a strict hour-by-hour schedule of fun (pajama dance party!) starts to rub some guests the wrong way. Plus, there's a ticking time bomb of a secret just waiting to go off...
The picturesque seaside setting and aspirational wealth immediately calls to mind shows like "Big Little Lies" and "The White Lotus," but the writing here is not as sharp or as deep as on those shows. Hollis' grief is too vague to be affecting, and the dialogue between the women lacks bite. Although it's a nice show to look at — she does have a beautiful house! — it feels at times like an ad for luxury lifestyle brands, set to a soundtrack of inoffensive radio hits best described as "cool mom Spotify playlist." Like quite a few limited series these days, this story could easily be told in a two-hour movie, so it's padded out with a bland subplot involving Hollis' college-age daughter (played by Harlow Jane) and unnecessary flashbacks to stretch it out to eight episodes.
There's not much drama to sink our teeth into, either. There's no murder, and not much sex — just women talking and fighting and drinking wine and making up. A low-key slice of life can be fine, of course, when it's done well, but it needs to be a lot more observant and insightful than this to hold our attention. Now as I mentioned, there is a twist — an admittedly juicy secret that only one of the invitees knows — and the question of the whole series becomes when this secret will be revealed, and what the fallout from it will be. It does eventually trickle out and start to infect the whole group, resulting in some explosive confrontations, but even that doesn't lift "The Five Star Weekend" out of its cozy slumber.
The veteran cast is stuck with one-dimensional characters
Jennifer Garner's sunny enthusiasm as Hollis is reminiscent of her similar role as an overly chipper mom in the Lena Dunham HBO misfire "Camping"... a show I'd rather not be reminded of, thank you. Regina Hall deserves better material than this, and Chloë Sevigny's Tatum is supposed to be the edgy straight shooter of the group — she smokes cigarettes! — but even she doesn't have much edge. Timothy Olyphant delivers his usual cool-guy charm as Hollis' old flame Jack, but he's not given any dimension beyond "wine mom sex object." (Meanwhile, we don't get to see enough of Judy Greer as smug neighbor Electra, who lobs passive-aggressive insults at the girl group. This show could use a villain!)
So is "The Five Star Weekend" a comedy? A drama? Or just a vibe? It's all so paint-by-numbers that it's hard to tell, or to care. There are worst casts to spend eight hours with, certainly, but we never really dig underneath those Instagram-ready smiles and find out what's truly going on with these women. As cozy as it is to spend the weekend with Hollis and her pals and marvel at her culinary creations, we can't help but feel like we're leaving empty-handed.
THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: Peacock's "The Five Star Weekend" looks like another juicy Wine Mom Mystery, but it doesn't deliver enough drama to get us hooked.