Spoilers for White Lotus season two ahead… (You have been told!)

In one of the first Current Mood newsletters I wrote about my favourite genre of fiction: Rich People Behaving Badly. I petitioned Netflix to introduce it as a sub-category, which – since I have little-to-no clout – is sadly yet to happen. Still, there is some sterling content about the implosion of the Haves out right now: Triangle of Sadness, The Menu and, hmmm, does a former Health Secretary tucking into camel penis count?

There is also White Lotus season two, a pure, class-A example of the genre. An apocryphal Oscar Wilde quote has been humping its way through my dirty little head while watching: ‘Everything is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power’. Transporting from a luxe resort in Hawaii to a luxe resort in Sicily for the sophomore season, sex is as ubiquitous as 500 thread-count sheets and questionable resortwear. (I am not going to discuss **that** shock sex scene but OMGWTFDMmerightnowifyouwanttodiscuss!!!)

In the palatial environs of a converted convent (irony!!!) various horny power games are unfolding. The vacuum packing together of different people from different worlds, plus the rules-do-not-apply hedonism of a holiday, all shaken up with entitlement and privilege give the sexual power play a baroque flair. White Lotus takes the games we are all capable of playing and dials them right up to Machiavelli.

It could all make for depressing, cynical and curiously disenfranchising viewing, but there is a rebellion swelling for the apparent under-dogs (more-than-meets-the-eye Daphne, Ethan’s beta biteback). And it is the beautiful young sex workers Lucia and Mia who are arguably the most powerful. We all have sex to get something (for the pedestrian among us that’s probably, well, an orgasm, connection or, pathetically, sometimes validation). They are getting €2000 a pop, an all-expenses-paid stay in a five-star hotel and also, possibly, a singing career. In their transactional honesty, the two young women have flipped the power dynamics.

Speaking of honesty, at least one of the men in Sicily seems to be fleetingly capable of it: horny octogenarian Bert. Played by the legendary F. Murray Abraham he has had probably the best line of the season so far: ‘It’s not like it was ever beautiful anyway. It’s a penis, not a sunset’.

Laura