Palm Royale review: Kristen Wiig social-climbs in style-over-substance comedy drama

Almost every great TV show is, essentially, a power struggle. Whether it’s children vying to take over a media conglomerate, a chemistry teacher becoming a meth kingpin, or warlords butchering one another as a zombie army approaches, there is a shared obsession with reaching the top. All that changes is the prize – creaky media assets, New Mexico’s dirtiest cash, the world’s least comfortable throne – and for Palm Royale, Apple TV+’s penetrating new social satire, the prize is a seat at high society’s top table.

Kristen Wiig is Maxine Simmons, a new arrival in 1960s-era Palm Beach, the Florida outpost where, apparently, wealthy women congregate for the season and compete for social supremacy. But does Maxine really fit in here? Or is she a grifter, hustling her way to the top? “All I ever wanted was to belong,” she tells us. “To be a somebody in this world.” And the somebodys of Maxine’s new world represent quite the dramatis personae: particularly Evelyn (Allison Janney), a shrewd operator and reigning Queen Bee, and Dinah (Leslie Bibb), the heir presumptive who has some issues with fidelity. And then there’s Linda (Laura Dern), a free spirit, reciting Simone de Beauvoir and bringing feminism to the unreconstructed denizens of the Palm Royale, the premier club on the Florida coast.

Loosely adapted from Juliet McDaniel’s novel Mr & Mrs American Pie, Palm Royale is a popularity contest conducted with all the decorum of a saloon knife-fight. “No people of colour, no Jews,” observes Linda, describing the Palm Royale for the newcomer. “A real wasps’ nest.” Amid this depravity, the 1960s come to life in glorious technicolour: characters sweep over chequerboard floors in floaty dresses, the ostentation of these women rendered in saturated tones that pop, almost cartoonishly, off the screen. Aesthetically, it is more of a piece with period shows like Minx, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel and GLOW than Mad Men or The Deuce.

At the heart is Wiig – also an executive producer on the project – as the striving Maxine. Wiig is a fantastic comic actor, though her forays into dramatic roles have yielded mixed results. Here, too, she is more comfortable with the screwball shenanigans than exposing the emotional fragility of a deeply insecure woman. Maxine spouts maxims like “I am a woman coming into her own” and “Pity is for the pitiful”, all while desperately sucking up to the vapid vampires of the poolside set. It is a difficult role to extract much sympathy from, just as the show struggles with raising the stakes above petty gossip rags, self-indulgent “charity” auctions, and avaricious questions of inheritance.

The balance between drama and comedy is a fine one, and Palm Royale fails to make an impression with either. The drama is undermined by the difficulty of making this greasy pole attractive, while the comedy is relegated, in Abe Sylvia’s writing, to a general impression of manic buffoonery. While the cast is terrific – Janney is suitably monstrous, Ricky Martin a sympathetic presence as half-naked pool boy Robert, and the legendary Carol Burnett scenery-chewing as a half-comatose matriarch – there is simply not enough meat in the Palm Royale’s club sandwich. Even the beautiful Hitchcockian opening credits and sweeping jazzy score hint at the prioritisation of style over substance.

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. The Vietnam war and women’s liberation movement appear as part of the backdrop, but only ever as decoration, like crab legs, tiaras, or $75,000 Egyptian cat statues. What’s left – like crème de menthe in a grasshopper – is intoxicating and extravagant, but, on a stomach empty of other ideas, might leave you a little woozy.