What would you do if your prestige HBO drama won huge audiences and five-star reviews all round? You probably wouldn’t kill off the fan favourite, the one who embodies all its comedy and tragedy in a performance of genius that revived her career at a stroke. Especially when she also happens to be one of your best friends.

But you’re not Mike White, you didn’t write The White Lotus and, although we’d all like to be, you’re not best friends with Jennifer Coolidge.

White, who has a fraught history with Hollywood, has displayed his contempt for popular tropes. “I was like, ‘You want your dead body? Here’s your dead body,’” he told The New Yorker, explaining why he framed the first series as a typical murder mystery by opening with a coffin, occupant unknown, being loaded on to a plane.

Coffins have provided the perfect Trojan horse for this satire of privilege, so you can see why White has kept it up. Series one introduced us to the first White Lotus resort, in Hawaii, where White owns a home and drew on the ethical implications. Class conflict between the rich and needy hotel clientele and the long-suffering staff simmers away until, one by one, the masks drop. Or, in one memorable case, the trousers.

Murray Bartlett was a revelation as hotel manager Armond, who is driven so feral by an especially entitled guest, Jake Lacy’s spoiled frat boy, Shane, that he excretes his revenge into Shane’s luggage. Arguably, all the guests deserve such a foul fate, which allows White to keep viewers guessing as to who’s in those coffins.

But the beauty of the show does not lie in whodunnit, or even in its idyllic settings. This is not Death in Paradise.

Take the second series, set in Sicily. White upped the body count and Cristobal Tapia de Veer gave the theme tune an EDM remix that had clubbers everywhere dancing to its weird ululations. But what elevated the series was White’s stiletto-sharp writing about sex: Harper and Ethan’s sexless marriage, Cameron and Daphne’s mutually assured infidelity, Portia’s Love Island-style adventures and hotel manager Valentina’s lesbian awakening. Not forgetting the three generations of Di Grasso men, each with their own outdated masculinities that lead them to shenanigans with local sex workers Lucia and Mia.

The funniest lines went, of course, to Coolidge’s Tanya. Abandoned by her husband Greg, whom she suspects is cheating, she is taken under the wing of Tom Hollander’s charismatic Quentin and his merry men, only to gradually realise they are scheming with Greg to rob and kill her. Her delivery of “These gays, they’re trying to murder me!” was probably enough on its own to win her that Golden Globe.

For proof of White’s artistic conviction, look no further than Tanya’s untimely demise in its perfect pitch of the comedy and tragedy that she always staggered between. Whereas “dying at the hands of someone else felt too tragic”, he told HBO, it made him laugh “to think she would take out this cabal of killers [...] then she just dies this derpy death”.

But as one icon dies, a new cast is born. White and his casting director, Meredith Tucker, a friend since college, have put together another fascinating ensemble for season three, boasting series one standout Natasha Rothwell, Jason Isaacs, Sex Education’s Aimee Lou Wood, Blackpink member Lalisa Manobal and 90s “queen of the indies” Parker Posey.

Thailand is the setting, Tapia de Veer draws from TikTok cat videos for his new theme tune, and White promises it will be “longer [eight episodes], bigger, crazier”. What’s it about? White tells Vanity Fair: “Eastern versus western religion, or western people in an eastern culture.”

The trailer presents another feast for the senses, with foot massages and fireworks, sex and stress management meditations, snakes, monkeys, armed robberies and strobe lights from both nightclubs and ambulances.

“Something is off,” says Posey’s character. To which fans will reply with a unanimous: “No shit.” There is always something off at the White Lotus, and it’s not just the spectre of death haunting its guests. As they seek  the superficial comforts promised by the most luxurious of resorts, they also fall victim to deeper, more spiritual dissatisfactions. The drama often reminds me of David Foster Wallace’s essay on his ill-advised Caribbean cruise, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, telling how the extreme indulgence of the passengers leads to an almost lethal introspection.

At one point in the trailer, a Buddhist monk teaches some surely unenlightened guests: “Everyone runs from pain towards pleasure, but they get there only to find more pain.” Where better than a five-star “nirvana” to realise you’re no closer to reaching it?

The show has always had spiritual concerns. Given that privileged westerners have long flocked to the east, adorned their homes with buddhas and read Eckhart Tolle in ill-fated attempts to “find themselves”, there is fertile ground for satire here.

And who better than White to explore it? His previous masterpiece, Enlightened, which starred Laura Dern as a self-destructive executive attempting to rebuild her life after a nervous breakdown, was apparently inspired by White’s own breakdown, which saw him turn to yoga, meditation and Buddhist self-help books.

Despite widespread critical acclaim, HBO cancelled Enlightened after two series, citing lack of viewers. The network has since broached the subject of a third, but White, ever the contrarian, is reluctant, for fear that it would now be “pandering to the zeitgeist”.

So this third series of The White Lotus might be the closest thing we’ll get to a spiritual successor to Enlightened – and hopefully it will be one to write about in our gratitude journals.

The White Lotus starts on 17 February on Sky and Now.