Two Weeks in August review: A gloriously awkward summer holiday that should have been cut short

What do you get if you take a group of big-name stars, cast them as close friends and send them on holiday for a drama about social combustions and existential dread?

The White Lotus! Oh, and The Four Seasons! But also: Two Weeks in August!

This eight-part BBC comedy-drama stars Jessica Raine and Damien Molony as Zoe and Dan – a married couple and parents to young children. It’s immediately clear not all is right between them. Dan is morose and irritable, while Zoe is upbeat yet stilted as they travel to the Greek villa she has arranged for them and their university friends to stay for a two-week holiday. A holiday that she and Dan can barely afford.

Once there, we meet Solomon (Nicholas Pinnock) and his younger wife, Jess (Antonia Thomas); single, career-driven Nat (Leila Farzad); and Jacob (Hugh Skinner), whose dating app hook-up Will (Dylan Brady) arrives unannounced.

This isn’t a series that’s interested in a slow-burn of increasingly squirm-inducing social awkwardness. It dives headfirst into it, with the group grappling social faux-pas, financial expectations and underlying rivalry from the jump.

Writer Catherine Shepherd (Sally4Ever, Cardinal Burns) has a strong comedy CV – and is perhaps best-known for playing April in Peep Show – so she’s no stranger to wringing the cringe out of a scene. Here, she mines it to terrific effect.

None more so than when a seismic incident occurs between two members of the group. What subsequently plays out at times feels reminiscent of recent film The Drama. Starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, the black comedy strikes a similar tone, asking big questions of its characters and prompting the audience to also look inward. What would you do? How would you respond?

The event blows all of the characters off course in different ways, but especially Zoe, for whom it triggers a profound journey of self-discovery and reinvention. But is this tangible, lasting change? Or is it just holiday madness setting in?

All the cast are superb, but this really is a vehicle for Raine. Her multi-layered performance, which ranges from subdued wallflower to chaotic socialite, is worth watching for alone.

That said, across the eight episodes the series does end up biting off more than it can chew. Already grappling with six central characters, it also introduces peripheral figures in the form of Will and two odious expats they meet along the way, James (Tom Goodman-Hill) and Flick (Dolly Wells), who threaten to break the series’ focus. It also introduces an element of Greek myths pervading their way into Zoe’s experiences. This may be dramaturgically inventive, but it feels like overload in a series already bursting at the seams.

Some may also find the drama’s comedy too uncomfortable and, initially at least, the stakes too lightweight in early episodes. When will this go all The White Lotus and bring in a murder?!

Well, by the second half of the series, the show does become darker; the comedy giving way to more serious fare as the stakes escalate, and it deviates from its initial examination of the minutiae of petty grievances.

Sadly, this is to the show’s detriment. It’s sapped it of its originality and frustratingly tips into melodrama. So, as can often be the case with group trips, perhaps this should have just been a one-week stay…

Two Weeks in August is available to watch in full now on BBC iPlayer.

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