“Maybe there could be five of us—a weekend of five-star treatment?” Too silly for any real person to say, this kind of sentence is practically compulsory in a certain aspirational strain of women’s entertainment. In the case of Peacock’s latest confection, our suspension of disbelief is justified by the fact that the show, premiering June 9, is a smartly executed adaptation of beach-read queen Elin Hilderbrand’s 2023 hit The Five-Star Weekend and that the shamelessly expository line issues from the irony-immune mouth of a perfectionist baking influencer played by Jennifer Garner. Creator Bekah Brunstetter (Sirens, Maid) has gift-wrapped a treat for our summer delectation, to be binged with glasses of ice-diluted white wine in hand.
Six months after her husband, Matthew (Josh Hamilton), died in a car accident, Hollis Shaw (Garner) breaks down during a daytime talk show and decides to decompress by assembling a fivesome of friends from different eras of her life for a girls’ weekend at the sprawling Nantucket estate she just happens to own. She’s also the type of benign control freak who distributes illustrated itineraries long before her guests board the ferry. Not that everything ends up going to plan.
Casting choices are crucial for a show like this, whose emotional beats have to ring true even as its surface gleams with fantastical luxury, and all of Weekend’s stars are as suited to their characters as Garner. As Hollis’s Type A college bestie and sardonic childhood soul mate, respectively, Regina Hall and Chloë Sevigny make prickly women lovable. D’Arcy Carden stands out in the delicate role of Brooke, adapting her sharp comic instincts to embody a nervously chatty, repressed “mom friend.” (Hollis’s college-aged daughter, played by Harlow Jane, is also on hand to act out her grief and judge her mother’s performance of normality.) Gemma Chan’s chic Gigi, a sympathetic follower of Hollis’s, is a bit of a mystery. The other guests don’t trust her for a second.
But, of course, everyone has a secret that’s bound to come out. Along with the reappearance of Hollis’s high school boyfriend (Timothy Olyphant) and a delicious turn by Judy Greer as a mean-girl acquaintance of Brooke and Hollis’s with a knack for popping up at the worst possible moment, these bombshells propel episodes tight enough, at around 40 minutes, to leave us wanting more. It’s weirdly rare, these days, to see a drama aimed at women that isn’t predominantly about murder or romance. When it comes to comfort viewing, though, familiar faces, low stakes, and an escapist setting—or, as Sevigny’s character sums up the weekend: “Dead moms. Cheating husbands. Soft cheese”—are hard to beat. Bring on the brie!
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