Amazon Prime Video has landed another critical hit, something it’s doing fairly often these days, and with its near-perfect 94% Rotten Tomatoes score with a decent number of reviews in, it’s worth checking out, it seems.
The show has one of the most generic names you can imagine, The Girlfriend, but it’s being highly praised as an excellent, sexy, psychological thriller starring at least two big actors you should recognize. That would be House of the Dragon standout Olivia Cooke, and eight-time Emmy nominee Robin Wright. Here’s the synopsis:
“Laura’s picture-perfect life starts to unravel when her son brings home a new girlfriend named Cherry; she becomes convinced that Cherry is a manipulative social climber, or is she just being paranoid?”
The son, Daniel, is played by Laurie Davidson, who does have a long list of roles under his belt, specifically on five different TV shows since 2024, but I would be surprised if many recognized him. I thought he was Josh O’Connor from Challengers on first glance. This is very likely to be his highest-profile role to date, and with all performances praised in the show, clearly he does a good job.
The Girlfriend just launched today, so it hasn’t made it to Amazon Prime Video’s Top 10 list yet, but it is being heavily promoted with several spots on top of my Prime Video page, so Amazon is giving it a big push. You do not have to wait week-to-week for this one, Amazon has decided to dump out all six episodes for a binge watch here. Though this is based on a novel by Michelle Frances, this is pitched as “season 1,” so it seems there could be more to come. There is a more recent book from her called The Boyfriend, but it’s not about the same characters.
Here’s what some critics are saying about the show:
- London Evening Standard – “The performances are uniformly excellent. Wright is magnetic, walking a fine line between maternal concern and suffocating possessiveness. Cooke, meanwhile, delivers a star turn: slippery, charismatic, and fascinating.”
- The Hollywood Reporter – “You don’t have to pretend there’s anything “realistic” or “relatable” about the ways these people are behaving, or that there’s some greater lesson to be found here. You just have to be in the mood for something a little bit silly, and a little bit nasty.”
My favorite classification would be from LeisureByte which called it “a crazy watch that is completely insane and entertaining.” Honestly, that one sold me. Curious to see how word of mouth is going to spread for this one.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
