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The White Lotus (2021)
8.0/10on IMDb
First aired
The benchmark for luxury-resort misery. Mike White's anthology checks a fresh set of wealthy guests into a different White Lotus hotel each season, first on Maui, then on Sicily's coast, then in Thailand, and lets a week of sun, spa treatments and room upgrades curdle into resentment, class warfare and, as each season's opening scene warns, a death.
It works because the staff suffer as much as the guests, and the comedy is so uncomfortable you laugh through your fingers. Each season stands alone, so you can start with whichever destination you'd least like to be stranded in. Expect a slow first couple of episodes before the knives come out.
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Benidorm (2007)
7.6/10on IMDb
First aired
If The White Lotus is the five-star version, Benidorm is the all-inclusive wristband. ITV's ensemble sitcom follows British regulars and first-timers at the Solana resort in Spain, where the buffet is a battleground, the pool is a social hierarchy and every package deal comes with a catch.
Ten series and 74 episodes means there's a lot of it, and the humor is broad, bawdy and proudly unsophisticated. That's the point: it's the most honest TV portrait of a cheap week in the sun going sideways, and the returning guests feel like the families you've sat next to at the airport gate.
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Camping (2016)
7.7/10on IMDb
First aired
The camping trip from hell, written by and starring Julia Davis. Fiona has organized a weekend away for her husband Robin's 50th birthday with a rigid itinerary to match, and then the recently separated Tom turns up with his uninhibited new partner, Fay, and every plan is thrown off course.
Vicki Pepperdine's Fiona is one of the most monstrous control freaks in British comedy, and the six episodes get darker and filthier as they go. This is the original 2016 Sky Atlantic series, not the later HBO remake, and it's for viewers who like their cringe comedy without a safety net.
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The Detour (2016)
7.7/10on IMDb
First aired
The family road trip comedy, made by husband-and-wife team Jason Jones and Samantha Bee and inspired by their own family vacations. Jones plays Nate, a dad hitting the road with his wife and two kids on a 1,300-mile drive to Florida that detours into disaster almost immediately.
It's much ruder than the premise suggests, and the show keeps escalating. The first season is the purest vacation catastrophe; the TBS series ran four seasons in all, from 2016 to 2019. Ideal if you've ever sworn never to share a car with your relatives again.
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Stag (2016)
7.0/10on IMDb
First aired
A bachelor party in the remote Scottish Highlands, a deer-hunting expedition nobody seems qualified for, and a group of obnoxious friends who start getting picked off one by one. Jim Howick and Stephen Campbell Moore lead a cast that plays every terrible groomsman type you've ever met.
The BBC comedy thriller is only three episodes, so it makes a perfect single-night binge, and it balances real tension with properly funny embarrassment. Watch it before your next group trip and you'll never complain about a bad hotel again.
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Henpocalypse! (2023)
5.6/10on IMDb
First aired
The bachelorette weekend that outlasts civilization. Five women head to an isolated vacation cottage in Wales to celebrate an engagement, and then the apocalypse arrives, leaving them stuck with each other, the party supplies and every grudge they brought along.
Caroline Moran's BBC Two sitcom is loud, silly and chaotic, more Bridesmaids at the end of the world than subtle satire, and the six episodes go by fast. Anyone who has survived a group trip planned by the one friend who loves matching T-shirts will recognize these women instantly.
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The Resort (2022)
7.3/10on IMDb
First aired
An anniversary trip to Mexico's Yucatán meant to rescue a tired marriage instead drags Emma and Noah into one of the region's strangest unsolved mysteries. Cristin Milioti and William Jackson Harper are a lovely double act as a couple who find chasing clues far easier than talking to each other.
Andy Siara's Peacock series is part screwball comedy, part true-crime caper and part love story, so it suits viewers who like their vacation disasters with a puzzle attached. It ran for a single season, which makes it a complete, contained watch.
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Avenue 5 (2020)
6.7/10on IMDb
First aired
The cruise from hell, relocated to space. Hugh Laurie plays the captain of a luxury interplanetary cruise ship that gets knocked off course, leaving him, a clueless billionaire owner played by Josh Gad and a ship full of furious passengers to survive on dwindling supplies.
Armando Iannucci's comedy of incompetence under pressure is aimed this time at customer service, and the passengers' complaints are as funny as the actual emergencies. HBO canceled it after two seasons, so the season 2 finale became the series finale, but both seasons are a sharp send-up of the cruise industry's promise that nothing can go wrong.
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Gap Year (2017)
7.0/10on IMDb
First aired
The backpacking trip that keeps falling apart. Tom Basden's E4 comedy-drama follows a motley gang of travelers on a three-month trek across China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Nepal, with Tim Key in a scene-stealing role.
It's warmer than most picks here, but the jokes come from the things that go wrong on a long trip: plans collapsing, falling out with the people you came with and pretending you're having the time of your life. A single eight-episode season, good for anyone who has come home from a gap year with stories they'd rather not tell.
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The Four Seasons (2025)
7.2/10on IMDb
First aired
Three married couples have taken weekend getaways together, one per season, for decades, and then one couple announces a divorce. Tina Fey, Will Forte, Colman Domingo and Steve Carell lead this Netflix adaptation of Alan Alda's 1981 film, created by Fey with Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield.
The settings are idyllic; the disaster is watching old friends take sides at a lakehouse, on a winter ski trip and everywhere in between. It's the gentlest choice on the list, best for viewers who prefer awkward dinners to dead bodies. Season 2 arrived on May 28, 2026, with the group packing their bags once more.
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Two Weeks in August (2026)
First aired
The newest arrival, and the closest thing Britain has made to The White Lotus. A group of family and friends head to a sun-soaked Greek island to relax and reconnect, until relentlessly polite Zoe, played by Jessica Raine, shares an illicit kiss and the dream vacation turns into a nightmare.
Catherine Shepherd's eight-part BBC One dark comedy-drama leans more toward squirming tension than punchlines, with a strong ensemble including Hugh Skinner, Antonia Thomas and Nicholas Pinnock. It's for viewers who find a vacation full of secrets funnier than a pratfall.
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Duty Free (1984)
6.4/10on IMDb
First aired
The original British package-tour farce. Amy isn't sure about spending her husband David's severance money on a trip to Marbella, and she's even less sure once the heat, the travel and Linda, one half of the other British couple at their hotel, start having a strange effect on him.
Eric Chappell and Jean Warr's ITV sitcom ran for three series in the mid-1980s, with Keith Barron and Gwen Taylor leading the cast. It's dated and studio-bound, so watch it as a time capsule of Brits abroad rather than for slick modern comedy.
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Fawlty Towers (1975)
8.8/10on IMDb
First aired
Every bad hotel stay you've ever had, distilled into 12 episodes. Basil Fawlty runs a 22-room hotel in Torquay on the "English Riviera" with infinite rudeness and an open loathing of nearly all his guests, and the people who check in for a seaside break leave with stories they'll be telling for years.
John Cleese and Connie Booth wrote just two series in the 1970s, so the whole thing is a weekend watch. It's seen from the staff's side of the front desk, but no comedy has done more for the reputation of the British seaside hotel as a place where your vacation goes to die.
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