{"id":4415,"date":"2026-07-06T17:39:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T17:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=4415"},"modified":"2026-07-06T17:39:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T17:39:00","slug":"the-five-star-weekend-is-a-love-letter-to-female-friendship-with-a-starry-cast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=4415","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The Five Star Weekend\u2019 is a love letter to female friendship with a starry cast"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There\u2019s an unspoken divide to TV shows about women\u2019s lives past 40. A-listers focus on prestige series about murder, mystery, and corruption, while B-list TV stars fill out the sappier stories about female camaraderie. Now Peacock\u2019s new dramedy \u201cThe Five Star Weekend,\u201d all eight episodes of which stream Thursday, is here to upend that hierarchy. Based on Elin Hilderbrand\u2019s 2023 novel, the eight-episode series delivers a warm, gentle, moving exploration of female friendship that would feel right at home on Hallmark, Lifetime, or a Netflix show like \u201cSweet Magnolias.\u201d But it\u2019s elevated by an all-star cast including Jennifer Garner, Regina Hall, Chlo\u00eb Sevigny, and Gemma Chan. It turns out you can <\/i>make a \u201cBig Little Lies\u201d without all the murder and subterfuge.<\/span><\/p>\n

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To be fair, there is still a littlesubterfuge in \u201cThe Five Star Weekend\u201d and a big central death, too\u2014there\u2019s just no mystery about what happened. A quick opening prologue introduces the pitch-perfect life of cookbook author and popular food influencer Hollis Shaw (Garner) moments before it\u2019s ripped apart by the news that her husband Matthew (Josh Hamilton) was killed in a car crash. The show then jumps six months into the future, where Hollis is unsure how to move on with her life and career and struggling to connect with her college aged daughter Caroline (Harlow Jane). <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In desperate need of a reset, Hollis borrows an idea from another widow: She\u2019ll invite one close friend from each stage of her life for a weekend getaway at her gorgeous vacation home on Nantucket, where she grew up. Somewhere between the board games, spa days, and make-your-own pizza bars, she\u2019ll magically start to feel better. Or at least that\u2019s the hope behind her perfectly planned itinerary and personalized welcome gifts.<\/span><\/p>\n

The best thing about \u201cThe Five Star Weekend\u201d is that it\u2019s earnest without being toosaccharine. Hollis\u2019 childhood bestie Tatum (Sevigny) and college roommate Dru-Ann (Hall) are immediately skeptical that a curated weekend is what she actually needs to grieve properly. Meanwhile, mom friend Brooke (D\u2019Arcy Carden) is relatably anxious about a full girls\u2019 weekend with women she doesn\u2019t even know. That goes double for Gigi (Chan), an effortlessly glamorous pilot who has never even met Hollis in person before. She\u2019s one of Hollis\u2019s Instagram followers, who reached out after Matthew died, and even she seems to think it\u2019s a little strange that their online friendship has now gone IRL in such an intensive way.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the surface, \u201cThe Five Star Weekend\u201d serves up the gorgeous visuals of a Nancy Meyers movie by way of Meghan Markle\u2019s cooking show\u2014complete with a lovely showcase of life on Nantucket. Yet showrunner Bekah Brunstetter (\u201cThis Is Us\u201d) is equally interested in the thornier, pricklier complexities bubbling beneath the surface of the picturesque exterior. These women don\u2019t just immediately love one another in the name of \u201csisterhood,\u201d and each also has something they\u2019re dealing with across the weekend, from medical scares to online cancellations to unhappy marriages. There are jokes about sex, conversations about menopause, and a whole lot of unpacking about what it means to reinvent yourself in midlife.<\/span><\/p>\n

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It\u2019s not challenging, exactly, but it is thoughtful, and the writing is elevated even further by the talented ensemble. Where these very different women could easily feel like archetypes on a checklist, the performers imbue them with a real sense of history and specificity\u2014from Sevigny\u2019s small-town earthiness to Hall\u2019s ambitious confidence to Carden\u2019s manic people-pleasing tendencies and Chan\u2019s ethereal gentility. There\u2019s a new dynamic to explore each time they break off into different combos across the weekend. Sevigny and Hall are particularly great at capturing Tatum and Dru-Ann\u2019s simmering competitiveness over Hollis\u2019 friendship. It\u2019s a rivalry that has a two-decade history of its own.<\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, Brunstetter has a keen eye for the way relationships drift and change over time and how different people can bring out different qualities in each other. Hollis is one person with the friend she used to sneak cigarettes with in high school and another with the one she ran PTA meetings with in her 30s. That gives Garner a whole lot to work with in a funny, moving central performance that calls to mind her turn in the underrated grief-themed rom-com \u201cCatch and Release\u201d\u2014a connection the show leans into by casting co-star Timothy Olyphant as Hollis\u2019 old high school sweetheart Jack. While Garner\u2019s career has felt a little sporadic as of late, bouncing back and forth between family comedies and her own prestige thriller series for Apple TV, \u201cThe Five Star Weekend\u201d harnesses her signature Type-A whimsy to full effect.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though \u201cThe Five Star Weekend\u201d can occasionally come a little unbalanced in its attempt to mix fizzy comedy with weepy melodrama, the cast is charming enough to steady the wobbles. Even when the road gets bumpy, it\u2019s a pleasure to spend time with these women and to follow the various twists and turns of their jam-packed weekend. The fact that the episodes are 35-45 minutes and each themed around an episodic event like a pajama dance party or a Saturday afternoon shopping trip also helps the whole show go down as easily as one of Hollis\u2019 themed cocktails. Equal parts cozy and cathartic, \u201cThe Five Star Weekend\u201d proves women over 40 don\u2019t need thriller throughlines to be interesting. Just living their lives is enough.<\/span><\/p>\n

THE FIVE STAR WEEKEND<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Starring: Jennifer Garner, Regina Hall, Chloe Sevigny, D\u2019Arcy Carden, and Gemma Cho. Streaming on Peacock Thursday<\/span><\/p>\n

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Jennifer Garner, Chloe Sevigny, Regina Hall, and more star in the adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s novel, streaming Wednesday on Peacock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts"],"yoast_head":"\n\u2018The Five Star Weekend\u2019 is a love letter to female friendship with a starry cast - Boston Relocation Insider<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=4415\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u2018The Five Star Weekend\u2019 is a love letter to female friendship with a starry cast - 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