Okay, so you’ve just torn through The Five Star Weekend and now have no idea what to watch next? Here are a few shows that share some similarities with The Five Star Weekend that you may be into!
Whether you’re looking for a new TV recommendation, what to read next, or what to line-up next in your podcast queue, we’ve got you covered, with our new entertainment series, ‘So You’re a Fan Of’. We’ll be working our way through new or popular TV shows, movies, books/authors and podcasts and will then match-make you with other suggestions for you to try!
I’ve been watching a fair bit of dark TV lately (anyone else recently binged Furious, Cape Fear and Widow’s Bay??) and so amongst my episodes of Furious, I’ve been swapping it up with episodes of The Five Star Weekend – a show that is light, soapy and a bit darn silly at times.
If you haven’t got onboard or even heard of it, it’s currently playing on HAYU – the final episode in the eight-part-series dropped on August 21. It stars Jennifer Garner, alongside Chloë Sevigny, Regina Hall, D’Arcy Carden (Janet from The Good Place!), Timothy Olyphant and Josh Hamilton. So yes, plenty of stars.
Essentially, it’s all about Hollis Shaw – a insta-famous food blogger, who loses her husband in a car crash (she’s in the middle of making picture perfect iced Christmas cookies when the cops show up on her doorstep). To combat the grief, she decides to create a five-star weekend getaway at her picture-perfect home on Nantucket with four friends from different stages in her life. There’s her childhood friend, Tatum (Chloë Sevigny), her college friend, Dru-Ann (Regina Hall), her motherhood friend, Brooke (D’Arcy Carden), as well as a woman, Gigi (Gemma Chan), whom she recently met online.
Of course as time goes on, we soon discover that all of these relationships aren’t exactly what they seem – and perhaps even Hollis’ relationship with her husband may not have been how it appeared on the surface. Hollis also has some other relationships to navigate and understand – including her teenage daughter, and her first love who is also on Nantucket.
Look, it’s shmultzy and cliched and sometimes feels like one of those bizarre Hallmark Christmas movies that Netflix seems to have a thousand of, but it’s also very sweet and watchable.
If you’ve been enjoying the lightness and fun of this show, the great news is it has been renewed for another season – but in the meantime, here are five other shows we think you’re going to love…
The Last Thing He Told Me
The obvious next show for you, if you enjoyed The Five Star Weekend – and particularly Jennifer Garner in it – is The Last Thing He Told Me.
The liking Jennifer Garner element is crucial here because she’s also the lead in this show. Albeit she’s quite a different character (definitely not so hell bent on being ‘perfect’!), but she’s still very Jennifer Garner in it, if that makes sense. You’ll also spot another familiar face – Jennifer’s real life bestie Judy Greer (it makes our millennial hearts happy to know that they became lifelong friends after 30 Going On 30 – despite playing enemies, which they often now do in any of Jen’s projects) who played Electra Undergrove (WHO came up with the names on this show?!?!) on The Five Star Weekend.
The tone isn’t as light or bubbly on this show – it’s still pretty kitsch with some bizarre script-writing, but it’s got a grittier edge to it all.
There are parallel’s a plenty though – both shows start with a sudden disruption involving the husband. Jennifer Garner plays Hannah Hall – an accomplished woodturner – whose husband suddenly vanishes after a mysterious FBI raid, leaving her to care for her teenage step-daughter Bailey, with whom she has a pretty hostile relationship. Hannah goes on a mission to discover what has really happened to her husband – realising that there is a lot she doesn’t know about the man she married (a kind of similar situation with her Hollis Shaw character, no?)
Watch it on: Apple TV
The Perfect Couple
Look, this show was absolutely batshit, but if you leaned into it, accepted that it was insane and kitschy, it was actually very enjoyable. The same can be said for The Five Star Weekend, no?
Like TFSW, this show has a stellar cast – in fact, even more so. There’s Nicole Kidman, Liev Schreiber, Meghann Fahy and Dakota Fanning.
Nicole Kidman plays Greer Garrison Winbury (this show also apparently loves to give people absolutely batshit names) – a famous and very wealthy murder-mystery novelist who definitely shares similarities with Hollis Shaw, in that she very much feels she has a public image to uphold. Greer and her husband host their son’s wedding festivities at their lavish home, but the chaotic wedding weekend soon turns as secrets, lies and – yikes! – a washed-up body threaten to unravel their carefully crafted public image.
Watch it on: Netflix
The Madison
Like TFSW, The Madison is shot somewhere absolutely beautiful and idyllic. In both, we also find ourselves following a woman who has just lost her husband.
From there though, they’re pretty different shows. The Madison is a Taylor Sheridan show: he of Yellowstone, Landman and 1923 fame. His shows can be surprising, corny, melodramatic, beautiful and ridiculous. And, that’s kind of exactly what we get here with The Madison.
Michelle Pfeiffer plays Stacy Clyburn, the matriarch of the well-heeled Clyburn family who live in New York. While she’s running around the city – coming to her adult daughter’s side after she’s mugged on the street (and quietly fretting about her other daughter, who has gone through a divorce and has two children of her own), her husband, Preston (KURT RUSSELL no less!), is getting away from it all in southwest Montana, fly fishing at a little cabin on the Madison River with his brother (played by Matthew Fox, yes, from Lost and Party of Five). But, the pair are killed in a plane crash.
This whole show is essentially the story of his “city mouse” wife and kids coming to terms with this massive shock to their systems. The whole family travels to the small town, and the rustic cabins (with no flushing toilets – the long drop becomes a character of its own in this show) as Stacy finds herself full of regret that she never visited the place her husband loved so much in the years he was alive.
Watch it on: NEON
Little Fires Everywhere
If you enjoyed the overall themes of this show – the meticulously curated, picture perfect female facades that mask deep personal chaos, heavy secrets ad complicated family dynamics, then chances are you’ll love Little Fires Everywhere.
It has some common threads throughout it – although this show is a lot more gritty.
Little Fires Everywhere is based off the brilliant Celeste Ng novel of the same name. Reese Witherspoon plays Elena Richardson – a journalist, landlady and mother of four teenagers who seems to live a picture perfect life. But, disaster strikes – her home is engulfed in fire. She’s then informed that her home was intentionally set on fire – with her inside it. Like all shows seem to want to start off at the moment, we’re given this information and then whisked back in time to find out what led up to this insane moment.
We’re then taken on a rollercoaster ride as the show explores the weight of secrets, digging into race, privilege, motherhood and just how complicated female relationships can be.
Watch it on: TVNZ+
The Better Sister
Yet again, this show kicks off with a high-powered, affluent female suddenly losing their husband. And yes, again like in TFSW, in this show the female protagonist finds herself discovering that her marriage wasn’t all it seemed.
In The Better Sister, we follow high-profile media executive, Chloe (played by Jessica Biel, who is actually pretty darn great in this), who has a picturesque life living with her husband Adam and their son Ethan – living between their chic Manhattan apartment and their country house. But then Adam is murdered and we learn a few things: Ethan is actually Chloe’s step-son and his mother is none other than Chloe’s sister, Nicky (Elizabeth Banks) whom is estranged from the family (yes, this show is messy). But now, as Ethan’s surviving parent, Nicky is back on the scene. And we have no idea who killed Adam – really, it could be anyone?
Watch it on: Prime Video
__________________________________
About the Author:
