' WHITE LOTUS ' WINGS : THAILAND HONOURS

The new season of ' White Lotus' set in Thailand is critical of its characters but reinforces antiquated orientalist stereotypes itself.

Did you hear? There's been another murder at a White Lotus hotel, this time the one in Thailand.

Back for its third season, Mike White's critically acclaimed and Emmy award-winning tragic-comedy series follows the terrible exploits of the White Lotus' rich, primarily white, holidaymakers, alongside the local employees.

There is social satire, a lot of drama and always a death in paradise. In the first season there was death in Hawaii, the second in Sicily, Italy, and now, in the third, there's death in Koh Samui.

As someone who has researched on screen representations of Thailand, I was intrigued to see how the show handled this locale. Disappointingly, the exoticness and beauty of Thailand is foregrounded, as is the mysticism of Buddhism.

The series follows four groups of people, the majority of whom the audience are made to feel repulsed by in some way.

The first is the Ratliff family. There's father, Timothy [ Jason Isaacs] who works in finance and mother, Victoria  [ Parker Posey ], whose anxiety means she is heavily medicated and constantly falling asleep.

Then the kids daughter, Piper [ Sarah Catherine Hook ], who is studying Buddhism; son Lochlan [ Sam Nivola ] who has poor posture from being glued to his computer, and Saxon [ Patrick Schwarzenegger ], the eldest of the three, whose primary focus is having sex.

The second group is three-middle-aged women who are on a '' girls' holiday'' who abandon their inhibitions as the series progresses.

They are routinely referred to as cougars by Saxon. Then there is odd couple Chelsea [ Aimee Lou Wood] and her older partner Rick [ Walton Goggins ], who seem to be going through a rocky patch.

The one likeable person, Belinda [ Natasha Rothwell ], is a character previously seen working in the spa in the first season's Hawaii resort. She's in Thailand on a research trip for her own well-being business.

The World Students Society thanks Andrew Russell, a lecturer at Faculty of Creative & Cultural Industries at the University of Portsmouth in the UK.