Critics call Peacock's 'The Resort' a compelling successor to 'Palm Springs'

Peacock's put out quite a few interesting streaming offerings this summer, but one of the most promising is The Resort, the new dark comedy from Palm Springs writer Andy Siara which follows a married couple who set out to recapture some magic, and instead find a mystery in the middle of their vacation. 

The Good Place's William Jackson Harper and Palm Springs' Cristin Milioti star in the eight-part series as Noah and Emma, a couple whose marriage has turned stale as their 10th anniversary approaches. Hoping to celebrate in style and maybe rediscover their love for each other in the process, they head to a resort in Mexico, where they stumble upon an old flip phone in the jungle that not only still works, but turns out to be a clue in a disappearance at the same resort more than a decade earlier. As they set out to try and solve the 15-year-old mystery, Noah and Emma find that the biggest mystery to solve may still be the one between the two of them. 

Trailers for the series have teased an intriguing blend of comedy and drama, with a lot of thriller elements thrown in, and a detailed exploration of the internal struggles each of the lead characters are dealing with. Now, with the first three episodes of the show finally out in the world, critics have begun to weigh in, and it looks like The Resort is a worthy successor to Siara's work on Palm Springs: A twisty character drama that manages to hold your attention even when it might threaten to get a little too complicated for its own good. Here's what some of the top TV reviewers out there had to say about the show this week:

"Even if it doesn’t know exactly where it’s going, The Resort is still so committed to making the journey worth the while that it very often succeeds," Caroline Framke wrote at Variety. "The most frustrating thing about its ending, really, is that there isn’t another page to turn for the next chapter — at least, not yet."

"The show’s a bit of a genre puzzle too: part mystery, part off-kilter comedy, part old-fashioned adventure à la Romancing the Stone, part love story. Some of the fun is figuring out how weird The Resort is willing to get with its answers," Annie Lyons wrote at Paste.

"We're certainly intrigued by the mystery that’s at the center of The Resort," Joel Keller wrote at Decider. "But we also hope that Milioti and Harper get more of their own story to dig into, as opposed to being just a typically bored married couple who come together under extreme circumstances."

"A show like this lives or dies by how clever the mystery at its centre turns out to be," Rachel Aroesti wrote at The Guardian. "While we will have to wait to see whether it lives up to expectations, this funny, fast-paced, knotty trip seems worth sticking with until the inevitably bitter – but hopefully not bitterly disappointing – end."

"Luckily, while its ideas threaten to spiral out of this world, The Resort is not without more grounded pleasures," Angie Han wrote at The Hollywood Reporter. "Milioti and Harper share the appealing lived-in chemistry of people who really did know and love each other once, even if neither performer is straying all that far outside their wheelhouse; between Palm Springs, Made for Love and The Good Place, these two are basically the go-to names for love stories with a twist."

"Yet despite its shaky coherence, the series still makes for weirdly compelling fun," Saloni Gajjar wrote at The AV Club. "Most of the credit for that goes to a ridiculously charming ensemble of character actors — Milioti, Harper, Luis Gerard Méndez, and Skyler Gisondo in particular — who pull off emotional and comedic nuance even as The Resort gets caught up in its complicated premise."

The Resort is now streaming on Peacock.