Best Limited Series, Anthology Series or Television Motion Picture – Nominee
“I’m getting old, but the girls I long for stay young,” says F. Murray Abraham in the first episode of HBO’s The White Lotus, Season 2. The line summons the thematic spirit of this new murder-mystery-comedy set in a resort: sexual appetites, male-female dynamics, and sex as a tool for power. Scheming and achievement are everywhere in this new adventure.
The second season of The White Lotus was all shot in Sicily, in the spectacular town of Taormina. Etna, the volcano, is seen in the back. The Ionian Sea laps right up front. The resort is set in the historical San Domenico hotel, sumptuously remodeled and now owned by the Four Seasons group.
This anthology series, created, written, produced, and directed by Mike White, has received four Golden Globe nominations, including Best Television Limited Series or Anthology Series, and three nods to actors Jennifer Coolidge, F. Murray Abraham, and Aubrey Plaza (it’s an eminently ensemble piece and nobody has a “leading” role).
Season 2 (also known as The White Lotus, Sicily) follows the great success of Season 1, which was set and shot in a resort in Hawaii. The series won 10 Emmy Awards out of 20 nominations (close to a record). 
Mike White has already hinted at a third season, probably set in an Asian country. “Season 1 was about money and cultural appropriation by rich people; Season 2 is mainly about sex,” White explains. “I think Season 3 should be a satirical and droll take on death and Eastern spirituality.” It could be set in the islands of the Maldives, as hinted by one of the characters in the Season 2 finale. White has also alluded that the denouement of Season 2 could receive a kind of development in Season 3 (one mystery remains, in fact, open).
In White Lotus 2, Jennifer Coolidge returns as the rich heiress Tanya McQuoid. She’s accompanied by her new husband, Greg (Jon Gries), and by an assistant, Portia (Haley Lu Richardson). Veteran actor F. Murray Abraham plays Bert Di Grasso, a flamboyant Italian American who intends to get acquainted with his land of origin and, possibly, with some distant Sicilian relatives. Travelling with him are his son, Dominic (Michael Imperioli), a Hollywood player with a penchant for prostitutes; and a grandchild, Albie (Adam DiMarco), a shy college graduate perennially embarrassed by both father and grandpa’s sexual innuendos and/or peccadilloes. 
Other American guests include two couples who are, somewhat, old friends. They are played by Aubrey Plaza and Will Sharpe, Theo James and Meghann Fahy. The two couples seem to have very little in common despite crisscrossing sexual tensions.
In the meantime, hotel manager Valentina (Sabrina Impacciatore) – a pragmatic workaholic who is also fragile and sexually closeted – stays busy trying keep out of the resort two young sexy guns, Lucia and Mia (Beatrice Gannò and Simona Tabasco).
Tanya is left abruptly by her husband and finds herself involved in some strange seducing plot by a wealthy Brit called Quentin (Tom Hollander), who turns out to be anything but a gentleman.
Californian Mike White plays around Italian stereotypes such as the Mafia, beautiful and seductive girls, manly men. He is not making fun of them, rather paying homage. Such tone is attested by the photogenic locations (Taormina and the surrounding areas, Villa Tasca and its 1700 fresco displayed in the allegorical opening credits). Also, listen to the soundtrack: it’s filled with hits from the Italian songbook of the 1970s, with songs by Fabrizio De Andre, Raffaella Carrà, Franco Battiato. Sicily got a lot of love from Mike White and his cohorts.