The White Lotus: a delicious third helping of Mike White's toxic feast

"Eight to a dozen affluent Americans", many of them hiding dark secrets, arrive at a glamorous location for a luxury holiday. A dead body then ruins everyone's fun, but hugely increases the audience's. "Yes, my friends," said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian: "we can only be back at the White Lotus."

The third season of Mike White's comedy-drama takes place in a wellness resort in Thailand, where we're reunited with one or two familiar faces and meet a whole new gang. There's the Ratliff family, headed by businessman Timothy (Jason Isaacs). Then there's a ditsy Mancunian (Aimee Lou Wood) travelling with her boyfriend; and three friends (Carrie Coon, Leslie Bibb and Michelle Monaghan) spending some quality time together after a few years apart. "It all makes for a rich stew of possibilities", and White turns up the heat "with the skill of a Michelin-starred chef". Exquisitely shot, scripted and paced, this is "a sumptuous feast for all the senses".

In terms of the format, there are few surprises, said Benji Wilson in The Telegraph, but that doesn't much matter: the cast is superb and the locations "equally so". It's also "wickedly funny throughout, a delicious, caustic bin fire of the vanities".

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I do worry that "things are starting to feel a little formulaic", said Carol Midgley in The Times. But there is "much delectable toxicity to feast on", and even if it's "slightly less mouth-watering than last time", I reckon you'll still want to "gobble it all down".