Have you watched or plan to watch the new eight-part TV series The Five Star Weekend? You might also want to consider these two movies, older perfect-for-summer stories about groups of friends who in various ways deal with at least one loss: The Big Chill and Steel Magnolias.
I. The Five Star Weekend (2026)
The Five Star Weekend (Peacock) is based on a 2023 novel by Elin Hilderbrand and features Jennifer Garner (Hollis), Chloë Sevigny (Tatum), Regina Hall (Dru-Ann), Gemma Chan (Gigi), and D’Arcy Carden (Brooke).
Big-shot cook Hollis learns from the get-go that her husband has died in an accident. Six months later, as her grief threatens to derail her career and her relationship with college-age daughter Caroline (Harlow Jane), she decides to host an all-female weekend at her Nantucket retreat; unexpectedly, Caroline also shows up. Each of the four friends represents a different phase of her life, ranging from childhood to this post-loss period. Each also carries her own burdens, and in just a few days of being together, each confronts significant realizations.
Cristina Escobar, rogerebert.com: “…(S)omehow, ‘The Five Star Weekend’ manages to surprise, even though so many of its beats are predetermined.”
II. The Big Chill (1983)
One of its taglines: “In a cold world you need your friends to keep you warm.”
This Lawrence Kasdan dramedy, with a 1960’s soundtrack and such notables as Glenn Close, Kevin Kline, Jeff Goldblum, William Hurt, Mary Kay Place, Meg Tilly, Tom Berenger, and JoBeth Williams, offers a slice of life about a group of friends in their 30’s gathering after the suicide of a college classmate.
Forty years after its release, Maddie Thomas, The Guardian, concluded, “The Big Chill is poignant without being cloying. The friends bond, cook together and watch football together – all so authentically that it comes as no surprise that Kasdan had the cast live and rehearse together for several weeks. In between eating Chinese food and too much ice-cream, a line of cocaine here and a joint there, around a kitchen table in a family home, eight friends find the antidote to life’s big chill: each other.”
This trailer was for the re-release of the movie in 1998:
III. Steel Magnolias (1989)
“The funniest movie to make you cry,” went the tagline. Unlike the previous two selections, however, there’s no initial death.
As the screen adaptation of a play by Robert Harling, whose sister died from complications related to diabetes, it does get there, though. The story involves six Southern women of varying ages bound in friendship: M’Lynn (Sally Field), daughter Shelby (Julia Roberts), hair stylist Truvy (Dolly Parton), Annelle (Daryl Hannah), Ouiser (Shirley MacLaine), and Clairee (Olympia Dukakis).
Sophie Zeldin-O’Neill, The Guardian: “…a brilliant depiction of friendship that manages to be witty, warm, uplifting, and, just when you thought you were safe, utterly heartbreaking. It’s also frequently laugh-out-loud funny.”
