3.5 out of 5 stars

Prime Video’s new thriller, The Girlfriend, follows how far a mother will go to protect her son from a partner she doesn’t believe is suitable for him. The six-part drama opens with a dramatic splash into a swimming pool. You don’t see who’s in the pool or what happened, only that something bad occurred. It feels like a spoiler for the eventual climax of the show, but by the time you get there, a thousand other shocks and turns will have distracted you from this introduction. Despite a soapy concept, The Girlfriend is a much darker and edgier tale than one may expect.

Flashing back five months from this pool scene, we meet Laura (Robin Wright), a well-off art dealer who lives with her nondescript husband (Waleed Zuaiter) in their lavish London home. She’s a little too excited to see her adult son, Daniel (Laurie Davidson), who’s returned home after travelling. She’s less excited to learn that he has a girlfriend, Cherry (Olivia Cooke), and that it’s getting serious. The opening episodes establish that Laura and Daniel’s relationship is a little closer than it should be—not quite incestuous, but certainly a little overly protective and controlling of her grown son.

Cherry is an eerie, miniature version of Laura. A luxury real estate agent, she mimics Laura’s mannerisms and speech patterns and can even keep up with conversations about artwork. Laura doesn’t know whether to be impressed or disgusted with the new woman in her son’s life. Either way, Laura makes it clear she does not approve of her son having a girlfriend, and she especially does not agree with it being Cherry.

The Girlfriend does something new with the genre by switching the point of view between the two rival women. 20 minutes into the first episode, the point of view changes from Laura’s to Cherry’s. Neither woman is perfect, and neither is the villain; both are flawed people trying to stay afloat in a world that they do not necessarily fit into. Using the switch in points of view allows the series to explore how women judge and perceive each other, often too quickly making baseless judgments. Laura and Cherry are more alike than either would like to admit, something the show fails to really explore.

Pretty early on, the show lets you know Cherry isn’t quite who she says she is. Everything is slightly exaggerated and adapted to please her new partner and his snobby family. The setup makes you think this entire series is themed around uncovering who Cherry is and what her motives are towards Daniel. However, in the first episode, the show lays out all its cards and goes in a totally different direction. The Girlfriend is not another working-class woman who tries to infiltrate and abuse the rich; it’s something much, much wilder.

Laura and her catty, four-times-divorced friend Isabella (a fabulous, scene-stealing Tanya Moodie) soon sniff out Cherry’s lies and become obsessed with unmasking her. They ask too many questions in the hope of catching her out. Did she not learn tennis at her posh school? Did she not fly in first class? Who designed her holiday wardrobe? The duo find themselves revelling in bringing down the young woman and putting her back in her rightful place.

The six episodes play out scenes from one woman’s side before flipping it, as both spend too long justifying their own unreasonable behaviour. Scenes don’t quite line up as the two women recount events differently, forcing audiences to properly pay attention to how each character remembers things. Laura and Cherry are both complex female characters that audiences will both root for and be horrified by. While they may justify their own behaviour, the script never does.

While the women are complex and well-written characters, brought to life by two skilled actresses, the men in their lives sadly don’t share this quality. Laura’s husband has as much screen time as her sofa, underwritten and a cardboard character of a man, despite a sympathetic performance from Zuaiter. And because he’s almost non-existent in the story, some of Laura’s extramarital behaviour doesn’t make an impact. Daniel, a man central to the plot, also lacks depth. He only exists as an excuse for these two women to argue and is largely underwritten.

The Girlfriend features some genuine twists and shocks as the women’s behaviour gets more and more extreme. It’s a bingeable TV show that always manages to land one shock per episode that will make you want to watch the whole thing in one sitting. The change in POV can become frustrating as it stalls the momentum. You get one big reveal or cliffhanger, and instead of resolving it or following it up, the show switches point of view to relive the event through the eyes of the other woman. While it’s a frustrating tactic, it’ll keep audiences watching closely.

But the story suffers from stretching itself thin over its six episodes. Time is wasted on clichéd scenes of rich people dancing in their mansions, unnecessarily long sex scenes, and pointless side plots regarding Olivia and Laura’s exes. The relationship between these two women is interesting enough that it could have held more focus over the short run. In the last half of the series, the writing especially loses focus as it tries to fill space with needless side plots and irrelevant side characters.

Based on Michelle Frances’s 2017 novel of the same name, The Girlfriend is a lot smarter than its set-up. It toes the line between camp and thriller, only failing in the last moments with an over-the-top ending that requires a suspension of belief. The show inevitably runs out of steam and has to become more extreme so as not to run out of ideas. Ultimately, the finale pushes too far into the unrealistic melodrama, but at least it neatly ties up the narrative. It’s not the most satisfying ending, but it at least leaves no hanging threads.

The Girlfriend is part thriller, part domestic drama about an overbearing mother struggling to let her adult son make his own choices. While it gets weighed down with silly side plots and melodramatic endings, it nevertheless a thrilling ride that you won’t want to stop watching.

USA | 2025 | 6 EPISODES | 16:9 HD | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

writers: Gabbie Asher, Naomi Sheldon, Polly Cavendish, Helen Kingston, Smita Bhide, Ava Wong Davies, Isis Davis & Marek Horn (based on the novel by Michelle Francis).
directors: Andrea Harkin & Robin Wright.
starring: Robin Wright, Olivia Cooke, Laurie Davidson, Waleed Zuaiter, Anna Chancellor, Francesca Corney, Shalom Brune-Franklin, Karen Henthorn, Leo Suter & Tanya Moodie.