Australian actor Murray Bartlett gets the kind of mid-career, middle-age role most jobbing TV actors dream of in Mike White’s pandemic-shot, Hawaii-based ensemble dramatic comedy The White Lotus (Foxtel, from HBO). Bartlett plays Armond, the manager of a luxe Hawaiian resort dealing with a contingent of needy guests. They’re not all bad people, but they’re all privileged, and different degrees of difficult. Watching Bartlett as Armond navigate their demands is often very, very funny; it’s a sublime performance, playing against an ensemble of famous and instantly recognisable faces including Connie Britton, Steve Zahn, Jennifer Coolidge, Alexandria Daddario and Sydney Sweeney. All of them are playing to type, well; Daddario and Sweeney are particularly good. But Bartlett steals the show: his Armond is the centre of the resort and the drama and he takes seemingly effortless control. Mike White’s writing is never subtle but unfailingly well observed and often very sharp, and his direction is moody and evocative. HBO (and hence Foxtel) are doling out the six episodes weekly; all three so far have been crackers.
On STAN, Aisling Bea’s half-hour comedy This Way Up has just dropped its second six-episode season. I’m just discovering it – halfway through Season One – and it’s a total delight. Bea plays Aine, a thritysomething Irish lass living in London and just trying to cope (at the beginning of ep one she’s being discharged from a facility after a nervous breakdown). Sharon Horgan (Catastrophe) plays her older sister who seems to have things a bit more together. The sisters’ relationship is the core of the show and the scenes between Bea and Horgan – they’ve played sisters before, on the BBC series Dead Boss – sparkle with natural affection and sharp wit. Lovely.
