‘The Five-Star Weekend’ Review: Jennifer Garner in Peacock Drama

If The Five-Star Weekend were a cookie recipe of the kind its protagonist, food influencer Hollis Shaw (Jennifer Garner), has become known for, it’d be one that sounds great on paper, looks pretty coming out of the oven and tastes…y’know, fine. Sweet. Soft. And yet somehow underwhelming, missing the complexity that might take a dessert from good to great.

Likewise, with its starry cast, picturesque views and breezy beach-read origins, the Peacock limited series is perfectly palatable as a mid-summer binge, just hefty enough to hold your attention but not so heavy as to tax it. It’s just never as special, or as memorable, as one might expect from the sum of its very promising parts.

Those high-quality ingredients include, for starters, a plot (adapted by Bekah Brunstetter from Elin Hilderbrand’s bestselling novel) that might as well have been engineered in a lab to provoke tears, laughs and envious sighs in equal measure.

Six months after the sudden death of her husband, Matthew (Josh Hamilton in flashbacks), Hollis is still so mired in grief she can’t get through a Today show taping without breaking down into sobs. In desperate need of a break, she summons her four closest girlfriends — one from each stage of her life — for a weekend of free-flowing wine, artisanal charcuterie and matchy-matchy outfits at her luxuriously airy, tastefully decorated Nantucket home.

The gals in question (who are all friends with Hollis but, crucially, not at all with each other) are played by a top-tier ensemble of actresses you’ve seen and loved in other things. Chloë Sevigny is Tatum, the slightly rough-around-the-edges childhood friend whose comparatively modest life is a tacit reminder of the path Hollis did not choose. Regina Hall is Dru-Ann, the college bestie whose unapologetic ambition and high-end tastes make her a symbol of the one Hollis did.

D’Arcy Carden is Brooke, the hopelessly awkward mom friend who’s surprised to have been invited at all. The same goes for Gemma Chan‘s alluringly mysterious Gigi, an internet buddy who’d never actually met Hollis in person before agreeing to what is essentially a four-day slumber party with her. It makes both more and less sense once her big spoiler-y secret is revealed.

All play their parts to a T, including Garner, who is ideally cast as a woman so preternaturally put together she can get through entire crying jags without smudging her mascara. My favorite performance of the bunch, though, was Sevigny’s salty, earthy, frequently funny turn as the friend most insistent on cutting through all the bullshit.

All play well together, too. While the barely concealed distaste most of these women have for each other give the early hours a faintly sour tinge, it also means their inevitable reconciliation in the second half of the eight-part season — once they start to form real bonds that go beyond their shared concern for Hollis — taste that much sweeter.

Like the stubbornly itinerary-minded Hollis, The Five-Star Weekend likes to keep itself moving. Hollis’ grief naturally takes center stage, despite her habit of insisting she’s fine, really, she’s just in a hurry to get started on those peach and prosciutto pizzas she’d promised for dinner. But each of the women have their own deeply personal reasons for accepting this last-minute invite, from a cancer scare (Tatum) to an impending deposition (Brooke) to a potentially career-ending cancellation (Dru-Ann).

On top of that, Hollis’ college-aged daughter, Caroline (Harlow Jane), is also “on island” for the weekend, in an effort to surprise her mom. So is Jack (Timothy Olyphant), Hollis’ high-school ex, for reasons that are barely explained because who cares. And an acquaintance, Electra (Judy Greer), who’s determined to sabotage the weekend for reasons that are even less clear. And a gaggle of “Hollibabes,” who periodically pop up to gush over their favorite internet cook at inopportune times.

It’s a lot, which is both a blessing and a (mild) curse. The Five-Star Weekend never wants for story. There’s always something going on, and if you’re not into one particular something, another something is just around the corner.

Unimpressed by Dru-Ann’s storyline, which scans like a terminally offline Boomer’s idea of what those undermotivated and oversensitive Zoomers might be whining about online? Maybe you’ll be more into her passive-aggressive rivalry with Tatum. Put off by Electra’s whole deal? Perhaps you’ll be charmed by Caroline’s burgeoning friendship with Audrey (West Duchovny), Tatum’s daughter. (“Want to come over and talk shit about our moms?” they text each other.)

But that busy-ness also keeps The Five-Star Weekend from delving all that deeply into any of these narratives. Each character reveals herself to be more complicated than she might have seemed at first, yet not quite complicated enough to feel like she might continue existing outside our purview. (The one possible exception is Tatum, who has the advantage of being a local with her own pack of supporting characters, including a kindly husband played by David Denman.)

Which, in turn, keeps the show’s emotions from flying as high as they ought to. The romantic sparks between Jack and Hollis, for instance, are dampened by the fact that he seems less like a person than an idealized cipher on which to project her past and potential future. (In fairness, as far as idealized romantic ciphers go, you could do far worse than Timothy Olyphant in rom-com mode.) The thrill of watching Brooke come into her own confidence dims once you give a second’s thought to what likely awaits her at home with her terrible husband, Charlie (Rob Huebel).

Even Hollis comes off less like a raw experience of grief than a perfectly polished performance of one. In the depths of her despair, we learn, Hollis would seek solace in Instagram comments while screening calls from her loved ones. Her journey is one of learning to acknowledge her pain rather than spackle over it with buttercream and sprinkles. But The Five-Star Weekend seems content to merely scratch the surface of her emotions, not break through to process them. It makes for a nicer picture, one in which you can trust everything will work out in time for one last round of hugs by clear blue waters. It also makes for a less interesting one.