The White Lotus: The Complete First Season DVD review

Sep 20, 2022- Permalink

The White Lotus is a hit with critics and audiences alike. Created by Mike White, the comedy-drama tracks the lives of the guests and staff at a Hawaiian resort called The White Lotus. Their lives seem perfect and the resort idyllic, but over the course of a week their dysfunctions come to a head and their façades begins to crumble. Nominated for twenty Emmy Awards, The White Lotus won ten, including Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, Outstanding Writing and Outstanding Directing for White, Outstanding Supporting Actress for the always wonderful Jennifer Coolidge and Outstanding Supporting Actor for Murray Bartlett. A prestige project like this would be a natural for a Blu-ray release, but Warner Brothers doesn’t do that too often for TV series, unless you happen to be related to a DC Comics franchise. So here we are reviewing The White Lotus: The Complete First Season on DVD. Standard WB disclaimer: Though Warner Brothers provide me with a copy for review, the views and opinions below are mine.

The six episodes of Season One are spread over two DVD discs. Hawaii begs for a Blu-ray release where colours would pop and details would be sharper, but at least using two discs keeps us away from major compression artifact issues. So there is a nice amount of detail in textiles and other elements up to the limitations of the DVD format. Darker scenes lose some detail which, again, would be handled better in a Blu-ray release. Fingers crossed that we see it in that format one day. Still, it’s a very nice DVD video presentation.

On the audio side, there is an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. English SDH are available. The witty dialogue is front and centre (literally) and is clear and never lost in the mix. The ambient sounds and other effects use the surrounds well, placing you in the scene so much that you might order a piña colada. The score is bright and dynamic.

As for special features, I would have loved a commentary track from Mike White, but instead we only get two three minute bits, one a quick look at the production by cast and crew and the other a word association game by the cast.

The White Lotus: The Complete First Season DVD teams a solid DVD video presentation with an excellent audio track. Though I would have loved to have seen it released on Blu-ray, if you love the show and don’t want to be tied to the whims of streaming libraries, getting it on any physical media is a plus.