How do you choose between two people you love?
In Prime Videos “The Girlfriend”, the choice is as incredible as possible and pits Daniel (Laurie Davidson) between her girlfriend Cherry (Olivia Cooke) and Mom Laura (Robin Wright). From the outside, Laura could be loving, protective, strenuous, even intrusive – while Cherry wounds doubt to hide pieces of her past despite seemingly loving her new beau.
On paper it can be all soaps like summer reading or weekend binge, but the limited series manages to hit the exact tonal cute place for this type of story. Like the source material from author Michelle Frances, Naomi Sheldon and Gabbie Asher’s TV Adaptation is told from several views, leaving the audience and remaining characters to make their own choices about who is truthful and who is lying – and why.
The show starts by portraying everything from both Laura and Cherry’s perspective, along with their individual scenes. In the middle sections, each POV moves the story forward on its own time, either tells about separate events or picks up chronologically where the other ended. In the end, both women are undoubtedly honest – if the lies they have told each other, Daniel, other people and themselves – but the dissonant lenses on their shared reality (alias Daniel) can no longer coexist.
That balancing document would not be possible without mastery of COOKE and Wright (as also directed the first three episodes), whose tension forms the basis for each relationship and plot point in the six section. Wright meets the exact correct note of desperate determination; Sometimes the show withdraws or changes perspective to preserve Laura’s image, but halfway through the season she releases with an unpleasant turn that guarantees viewers to stay through the end.
Cooke is irresistible as always and plays a delicious mix of femme fatale, girl next to it and genuine psychopath – depending on who you think. So regal as she is in “House of the Dragon”, “The Girlfriend” gives the actor a tangible physical freedom (not to mention a really fantastic modern wardrobe).
Focusing mainly on Cooke, Wright and Davidson, the ensemble is dense and rounded by supporting performances from Waleed Zuaiter, Tanya Moodie, Shalom Brune-Franklin, Karen Henthorn, Anna Chancellor, Leo Suter and Francesca Corney. Niamh Coulter’s production design and elegant suit by Joanna Johnston and Aaron Timperley sell the pocket of the British wealth that Daniel and those close to him occupy, and which Cherry will not rest until she acquires. Music supervisor Matt Buffa enjoys more than a few needle drops that cater for scandalous character types that only enrich this viewing experience.
It is best to leave the story there for Spoiler’s sake, but the “girlfriend” is exactly that kind of psychological and soapbinge to start autumn -TV season, easily swallowed in an abandoned sitting with a cheeky drink and a lot of screams on the screen. The turns vary in the actual shock value, but the tension gives enough a hook to follow this oblique love story to its conclusion. You may not choose between people you love; Maybe they choose for you.
Rating: B+
All six sections of “The Girlfriend” now flow on Prime Video.
