The White Lotus’s sublimely stressful season three shows this satire can go anywhere in the world

Last week I paid a plumber £140 to explain to me that, to improve the water pressure in my bathroom, I should hold the palm of my hand over the end of the tap and run it until the water reverses up the pipe and removes the airlock. The experience of doing this – feeling the water stream in, the sink shudder and then, finally, releasing a torrent of backed-up water – reminded me of watching Sky Atlantic’s The White Lotus, Mike White’s feverishly stressful satire of modern capitalism.

This time, the action is relocated to a Thai wellness spa – complete with an unenforceable digital detox policy – nestled in the coastal jungle. Monitor lizards scuttle on pathways, monkeys leer from trees, and the wealthy assemblage of guests luxuriate in total serenity. Of course, that calm doesn’t last long – and will ultimately culminate in gunfire that pierces the sanctuary. This is The White Lotus after all. Some things might change – the location, the dramatis personae – but we’re always going to end up with a body.

At its heart, The White Lotus is two things: a great piece of writing and an even better exhibition of casting. The cast here is ludicrously stacked. There’s the American family led by patriarch Tim (Jason Isaacs), who’s flirting with financial ruin, his acerbic wife Victoria (Parker Posey) and their brood (Sarah Catherine Hook, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Sam Nivola). There are the three old friends reuniting for this holiday (“a victory tour, not a mid-life crisis trip”) played by Michelle Monaghan, Carrie Coon and Leslie Bibb. There’s the mysterious Rick (Walton Goggins) and his bubbly young girlfriend Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) bringing the trope of “sunshine and grump” vividly to life. And then there’s security guard Gaitok (Tayme Thapthimthong) crushing hopelessly on fellow hotel staffer Mook (Blackpink’s Lisa).

That’s all without mentioning a couple of returning faces, most prominently Natasha Rothwell’s Belinda, the massage therapist looking to pick up Thai techniques and “bring the magic back to Maui”. The roll call is so long that you could almost forget Christian Friedel, the lead in The Zone of Interest, as the hotel manager, Charlotte Le Bon as a martini-sipping socialite, and a surprise A-list cameo in Bangkok. It’s almost ostentatious, but, then again, The White Lotus has never held back. It is an excessive show about excess. And the presence of such a galaxy of stars allows White, the show’s sole writer and director, to perform a cup and balls routine, moving the pieces so fast that the eye is drawn from one drama to another – from divorce to fraud to incest to prostitution to burglary to murder – and you never know where the ball will end up.

White has now proven himself, repeatedly, as a master of passive aggression. The three schoolmates, in particular, lace each remark with competition and resentment. “It’s just a front,” one says, of her successful actress pal. “The bigger the front, the bigger the back.” Parker Posey, meanwhile, is one of those actors who has long had Big White Lotus Energy (others, in this category, for potential future castings: Marcia Gay Harden, Cynthia Nixon, Michael Stuhlbarg, David Hyde Pierce) and is always a delight. Convincingly rich, convincingly neurotic. Their children, however, are written strangely, as though they are meeting for the first time on this vacation (though Schwarzenegger’s Saxon is a Patrick Batemanesque monster for the ages). White has set high standards, and, unlike Royal Mail, he always delivers.

Some will prefer Hawaii, some will prefer Sicily, but Thailand will have its own fans. What it shows is that The White Lotus is a franchise now so totally in command of its own appeal that it can be transferred anywhere. Compared to other contemporary anthology shows (like True Detective or Fargo), it feels more in control of its tone, more consistent in its approach. The key is to keep your hand on the tap, to keep the tension building, until release – and materialism-stomping catharsis – is inevitable.