Robin Wright plays overbearing mother Laura in new Prime psychological thriller series The Girlfriend.Christopher Raphael/Amazon MGM Studios
Is anyone better than Robin Wright at arranging her features into an expression of blank malice? Her delicately lethal jaw and cheekbones, her calm, unblinking, “You are nothing I need to think about” eyes. She can terrify you by simply regarding you. She used That Look to great effect in the Netflix series House of Cards, and it’s back for her latest, Prime’s psychological thriller series The Girlfriend.
Wright plays Laura, the epitome of chic: her wispy-cool hair, her on-trend wardrobe, her shelter-mag-worthy homes in London and Spain. Her open marriage, to a wildly wealthy real estate mogul (Waleed Zuaiter). Her occasional rolls in the hay with a talented woman artist telegraphically named Lilith (Anna Chancellor). Her fierce love for her handsome doctor son, Daniel (Laurie Davidson) – uh-oh. Did Laura just kiss Daniel on the mouth? Should her feet be on his lap like that in the sauna? Is she sitting a little too close to him in his bed? Her Jocasta is awfully easy-breezy about this whole Oedipus thing.
So, when she meets Daniel’s new girlfriend (Olivia Cooke, Slow Horses) – whose mini-dress is cherry, whose kissable lips are cherry, whose name must therefore be Cherry – Laura is instantly allergic, and begins to deploy That Look against her. (Wright also directs some episodes.)
Laurie Davidson, left, stars as Laura’s handsome doctor son Daniel.Christopher Raphael/Amazon MGM Studios
What showrunners Gabbie Asher and Naomi Sheldon, working from Michelle Francis’s 2017 source novel, want us to wonder is, “But what if, despite Laura’s creepy possessiveness, her radar is right? What if Cherry is bad news?” They deploy a trope that is now as familiar in dramas – Gone Girl, The Affair – as the direct-to-camera interview is in sitcoms: The same scenes repeated from different points of view, with the name LAURA or CHERRY helpfully stamped on each opening shot.
In the Laura sections, Cherry is a sociopathic gold-digger who steals Laura’s bracelet, tosses her cat out a window, punches an ex and worse. In Cherry’s, Laura is a psychopath who vowed that if she can’t have sex with Daniel, no one will.
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It should be antic, scorpion-in-your-soup, nasty fun, and for a while it is. Cherry defiles her ex’s wedding cake. Laura turns the sprinkler on Cherry as she lolls on a lounge chair performing an intimate act. Each woman pleads her case to Daniel, but he is maddeningly underwritten, and no help to either of them.
But then, halfway through the six episodes, Laura does something so colossally outrageous, so patently unforgivable, that the crazy train doesn’t so much derail as stop in its tracks, while we witnesses walk quickly away, embarrassed for everyone concerned. The story never recovers. By the time the last episode reaches for tragedy, you will be scoffing too hard to care.
Yet even if we set aside that epic-fail plot point, The Girlfriend still wouldn’t work. If you’re going to sell me, in 2025, a psychological thriller about women it better have something interesting to say about women in 2025. It can’t be just wicked jealous crone versus volatile grasping hussy, like something out of a 1930s pulp novel.
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No wonder Cooke plays Cherry with her mouth slightly agape, her eyebrows arched and forehead furrowed into question marks: “This is really what we’re doing?”
Because the deeper layer was right there to be mined: class horror. Everything about Laura murmurs quiet elegance, from her cashmere neutrals and sleek dark suits to her interesting loafers and “I’m vacationing in Spain” caftans. Cherry the butcher’s daughter, on the other hand, is l-o-u-d: big hair, teeny sparkly skirts, tottering heels.
It would have been far more interesting – and relevant to today – to watch Laura confront an unwelcome truth: That although she fancies herself an open-minded, small-l liberal, in reality she loves being a one-percenter, and mistrusts, maligns and rejects anyone who isn’t.
Instead, the series undermines itself by going Gothic. Laura should have been too clever to do something that ridiculous. Wright, too.
The Girlfriend will stream on Prime on Sept. 10.
