Palm Royale

Palm Royale is so gorgeous to look at, the story is almost secondary. Funny and frothy, Palm Royale is an indulgent watch not unlike gorging on colorful and beautifully decorated pastries.

fter six hours “Palm Royale” didn’t make me care enough to continue, though I did skip to the last episode and discovered the show does not wrap up in a way that suggests it’s intended to be a limited series.

Wiig fanatics will find much to admire in Palm Royale, which is every bit as indulgent and lavish as the lives of its characters. But what Palm Royale lacks, compared to the very best dynastic battles, is the ability to make the drama about more than just the internecine wranglings of a privileged minority.

Great cast, great performances, but they are in a series whose episodes somehow feel both overstuffed and overlong at the same time. Fun, perhaps, but it could have been so much more.

Ultimately, it all starts to feel redundant, even pointless, as Maxine keeps trying to wear the ladies down in episode after episode. At times, there doesn’t seem to be enough story line to fuel 10 hourlong episodes. A little more drama — or even some heavier satire — might have given the show more weight and purpose. Still, it’s an enjoyable, if forgettable, romp.

There are a lot of moving pieces on this show, and so far everyone is pretty one-dimensional with the exceptions of Robert and Linda, who are both hiding ulterior motives and thus strike me as the most interesting. While I love watching Allison Janney being a ruthless bitch, she could use a little more to do. Otherwise, Palm Royale is stunning, but it’s not as funny as it clearly wants to be.

“Palm Royale” nevertheless feels like an underachiever, a wannabe that doesn’t earn a place in the exclusive elite-series club to which it aspires.

If the show were funnier, all the grasping wouldn't be so dispiriting. But again, the series may not be a comedy.

At its best, when it leans into the caricature it sometimes seems to be going for, the show can approximate the verbal pleasures and visual delights of a Coen brothers comedy (think “Intolerable Cruelty”). But with a plot as overstuffed as its characters are thin, the result can be perplexing when it isn’t simply predictable — or ploddingly bureaucratic.

A social satire lacking bite or even a point of view, “Palm Royale” is as substance-free as the froth and foam left by waves on the beach.

By the middle of the season, all the charm of the casting and design elements have worn off, leaving nothing but a hollow exercise in style. Like so much of the world of wealth and excess, it looks great but means nothing.

Despite a top-notch cast, Apple TV+’s Palm Royale is a middling soap that lacks laughs and emotional depth.

It isn't funny enough to be a comedy, but it isn't serious enough to be a thriller. I have read that this promises to be the new White Lotus. Spoiler alert: it isn't.

Palm Royale is a show about the dangers of excess, but it doesn’t practice what it preaches. Beautiful gowns, though.

While there’s plenty going on in Palm Royale, including back-stabbings, torrid affairs and attempted murders, there’s precious little true substance lurking beneath its candy shell. At ten hour-long episodes, the comedy takes an awfully long way to get nowhere very interesting at all.

But style isn’t substance, and “Palm Royale” is lacking in the latter if not the former. For one, not much even happens for the first two-thirds of the season.