In a 2014 interview, Aretha Franklin was asked her thoughts about Taylor Swift and famously responded “Great gowns… beautiful gowns”. The epitome of damning with faint praise, her words sprung to mind while watching Palm Royale, Apple TV+’s starry new Kristin Wiig-led comedy. It is stuffed to the gills with beautiful gowns.
There are floor length sequins and swathes of pastel kaftan, draped jewel-hued chiffon and feather-trimmed capes. There are tennis bracelets and tiaras and glittering turbans. It is undeniably gorgeous, set in a world where appearances are everything – the summer of 1969 at the exclusive Palm Royale club in Palm Beach, Florida.
As the world around them is beginning to stir with second-wave feminism, the civil rights movement, and space exploration, the Palm Royale elite are happily ensconced in their booze-soaked, sun-drenched luxury mecca, the last bastion of old school sensibility and a haven from progression.
But even gated communities struggle to keep out the riff-raff and the opening episode sees Wiig’s Maxine scale the fence to play at being one of the fabulously well-off. An orphan and former pageant queen from Tennessee who grew up obsessed with high society, Maxine is a woman on a mission: to be somebody.
Armed with bundles of misplaced charm, a creative spin on the truth and a wardrobe borrowed from currently incapacitated grand dame Norma (the legendary Carol Burnett), Maxine sets about ingratiating herself with the preening, pill-popping Palm Royale Mean Girls including queen bee Evelyn (Allison Janney) and star-on-the-rise Dinah (Leslie Bibb).
Rounding out the cast are Laura Dern as a paisley-clad feminist, Ricky Martin as a closeted waiter and Kaia Gerber as a manicurist with modelling dreams – the A-list names here are as sparkly as the costumes.
With no disposable income, Maxine trades in tenacity, secrets and unwavering self-belief. She is a marvellous showcase for Wiig’s comedy stylings: overt desperation, misreading social cues, shoulder shimmies, slapstick and smiling through gritted teeth.
But while Wiig shines, the series itself becomes muddy as Maxine’s great pretender narrative gets caught in a seemingly endless cycle of parties, fundraisers and frenemy-based cocktail hours. She variously triumphs and trips up while edging her way to the jewel in the crown of the Palm Beach season: the Beach Ball. But the simple goal of hosting a party is just not enough to sustain 10 hour-long episodes that frequently hop around unfinished subplots without much clarity.
The social climbing vs social collapse story might work if any of the characters behaved consistently but their motivations, relationships and personalities switch on a dime (although perhaps that is the point – as one declares, “no-one in Palm Beach is who they say they are”). Still, there needs to be more cohesion to Maxine, who too often veers from naïve idealist to wily manipulator, from ruthless schemer to harmless sweetheart.
The politics are also messy. We are supposed to care about the local liberal activists but they never become more than cardboard cut-out clichés and their leader, Virginia (the only prominent Black character played by Amber Chardae Robinson), comes perilously close to being a magical guide to allyship.
As background TVs blare with Nixon speeches and anti-Vietnam protests, the comedy mocks the way the privileged ignore issues until they affect them personally – as seen with an early abortion storyline. But the overwhelming silliness of most of the plot (multiple attempted murders, blackmail, a fake prince, a real astronaut and an actual beached whale) never manages to find a balance with the social commentary it flirts with.
Palm Royale is a show about the dangers of excess, but it doesn’t practice what it preaches. Beautiful gowns, though.
‘Palm Royale’ is streaming on Apple TV+.