Garner's Five-Star Weekend Ditches Murder Trope
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- "The Five-Star Weekend" is a Peacock limited series starring Jennifer Garner as food influencer Hollis Shaw, adapted from Elin Hilderbrand's novel by Bekah Brunstetter ("This Is Us"), with all eight episodes now streaming.
- The review highlights the show's deliberate departure from the murder-mystery trope common to prestige beach dramas, citing "Big Little Lies," "The White Lotus," and "The Perfect Couple" — also adapted from Hilderbrand's work.
- Hollis invites one friend from each phase of her life — Chloë Sevigny's Tatum (childhood), Regina Hall's Dru-Ann (college), D'Arcy Carden's Brooke (Wellesley "mom friend"), and Gemma Chan's Gigi (online follower turned confidante) — to her Nantucket childhood home for 72 hours, six months after her husband died in a mundane car accident.
- The series centers on midlife grief, platonic bonds, and frank discussions of perimenopause, with Judy Greer recurring as a passive-aggressive mean girl and Timothy Olyphant cast as Hollis's hunky high school ex Jack.
- The critic argues the show treats Hollis's Martha Stewart-style domesticity as a legitimate trauma response rather than satire, a deliberate contrast to recent prestige TV that punishes wealthy protagonists with murder or moral comeuppance.
Why it matters: The review frames 'The Five-Star Weekend' as a corrective to recent prestige TV's pattern of pairing affluent characters with suspicious deaths, naming 'Big Little Lies,' 'The White Lotus,' and 'The Perfect Couple' as the formula it rejects. By staking out an eight-episode run on Peacock that focuses on women's friendships and grief without a body to uncover, the series positions itself as a counter-programmed beach drama in a crowded genre — and gives Garner a maternal, culinarily inclined role the critic says fits her like a glove.
