Palm Royale: Kristen Wiig Stars as A Social Climbing Con Artist

By Liam Lacey

Rating: B-

A gaudy social satire with a mushy centre, Palm Royale is a lavish new series launching on Apple TV+ streaming service. Kristen Wiig stars as Maxine, an indefatigably perky Southern belle from humble roots who attempts to finagle her way to the top echelon of Palm Beach society, symbolized by acceptance in the Palm Royale country club.

Though lavish production values and the stellar cast hold interest, a progressively wonky plot and pacing mute the potential impact of this this update on William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair.

Set in 1969 — the first year of Richard Nixon’s presidency and filled with feminists, gangsters, socialites, and shady politicos — the 10-part series features a cast of celebrated women stars: Carol Burnett, Laura Dern, Allison Janney, Leslie Bibb and Julia Duffy.

Following the lead of streaming hit series like The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel and Living in Chemistry, Palm Royale is framed with a retroactive feminist gaze, embedded with a spirit of campy pageantry and constantly changing over-the-top costumes.

The secondary male characters include Josh Lucas as Maxine’s feckless husband Douglas, an exile from the wealthy set now making a living as a domestic pilot. He’s the nephew and possible heir to the “mouthwash and plastics” fortune possessed by Norma (Carol Burnett) who, as the series begins, lies in a coma in a care facility.

Read our interview with Palm Royale star Josh Lucas

The other major male character is pop star Ricky Martin, a waiter at the Palm Royale and eye-candy pool boy, frequently appearing shirtless and in shorts. (Martin and Wiig are now both in their fifties but through some combination of genes and movie magic, each appear a couple of decades younger.)

On the auspices of taking care of her aunt-in-law, Maxine squats in Norma’s mansion and begins pawning the older woman’s jewelry for cash as she launches her campaign to join “the most exclusive club in the world.” The club’s women members oversee an annual series of high-profile charity events where they battle for the highest profile in the local newspaper, The Shiny Sheet.

To join the magic circle, Maxine must persuade or blackmail the two reigning queens of the scene to vouch for her. First off is the imperious Evelyn (Janney), who is married to an invalid husband (Bruce Dern), and Dinah (Bibb), whose libido might undermine her social position. Apparently by chance, Maxine also falls in with a militant, feminist, hippie anti-war collective led by Linda (Laura Dern) who meet at the West Palm Beach bookstore called Our Bodies, Our Shelves.

Series creator Abe Sylvia (The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Dead to Me) has stripped Juliet McDaniel’s novel, Mr. And Mrs. American Pie, for parts, keeping the period backdrop and social milieu, but scrapping the original plot in which a jilted housewife and a gay man pretend conspire to help her win a pageant as “the nation’s best wife and mother.”

While early scenes hint at one major mystery to be uncovered, the TV series develops serial bloat, piling on increasingly absurd complications and fresh humiliations for the likeable con-artist heroine, with soap-opera style retrospective continuity provided by flashbacks.

A pre-credit sequence, suggestive of the 1950 film noir Sunset Boulevard, reveals Maxine in a formal gown, floating underwater, while her voice-over begins to recount her story to an unseen male confidant. Maxine’s on-again, off-again narration (a therapy session, a police interrogation?) is never explained. The series ends on an unresolved note, leaving answers to next season, if there is one.

One shadow over the series is the reputation of the contemporary Palm Beach, the island resort town that Time magazine called “the new capital of corruption” and the epicentre of obscene wealth (according to Forbes, 57 billionaires have residential ties to the resort island) as well as just obscenity, home as it is to convicted sex offenders Donald Trump and the late Jeffrey Epstein.

By contrast, this busy tale of desperate housewives jostling for social position seems quaintly innocuous.

Palm Royale. Created by Abe Sylvia. Directed by Sylvia, Tate Taylor, Claire Scanlon and Stephanie Lang. Starring Kristen Wiig, Carol Burnett, Alison Janney, Ricky Martin, and Josh Lucas. The first three episodes available March 20, with new episodes each week until May 8.