Prime Video's juicy domestic thriller is told from two points of view.
, is a textbook case—so much so that when we first meet the close mother-son duo, affectionately wrestling in the indoor pool of their posh London home, you’d be forgiven for assuming they were lovers.
But soon enough, Laura’s sweet life in her sweet home with her sweet son sours with the arrival of a particularly tart fruit: Cherry. Cherry Laine is Daniel’s new girlfriend, and Laura doesn’t approve: not of her name , not of her low-cut red dress , and not of her son’s hand that Cherry allows to creep scandalously high on her thigh in the middle of dinner. Even when Laura does try to get to know the maraschino-haired young woman, she’s left with even more questions and concerns. Did Cherryrecognize the paintings that line the walls of Laura’s home, or did she just conveniently memorize the excerpts off a nearby coffee-table book? And did sheHelpfully, every episode of the six-part domestic thriller is split into two halves, one following Laura’s point of view and the other giving the same order of events from Cherry’s perspective. That red dress Cherry wears to meet Daniel’s folks? She can’t actually afford it and panics when Laura spills coffee on the garment, which still has its tags on it. You see, while Laura’s moneyed life is as carefully curated as one of her galleries—from her artfully minimalist wardrobe to the family’s sunny vacation home in Spain to even the mistress she allows her husband Howard to keep on the side—Cherry’s working-class background is far less tidy, one marked by scrappy determination and social ambition. Through this dual-narrator format—which faithfully follows the framework of Michelle Francis’ 2017 novel of the same name, on which the series is based—we get to see not only how major plot points differ in the women’s minds but also the smaller, knottier stuff: a micro aggression here, a tremor of tension there. A hurtful slight that one finds significant enough to linger on is barely mentioned in the other POV, showing how each mindset, memory, and even ego can bend and buckle the truth. It’s a clash the two actors clearly relish, each gamely playing victim or villain depending on which outlook is at the forefront. succeeds: Is Laura simply being protective—an understandable byproduct of tragically losing her first child, Daniel’s sister Rose—or is she paranoid to the point of no return? Is Cherry merely self-conscious of her humble upbringing or is she a manipulative maniac? It’s when the limited series gets too sure of who the bad guy really is that it loses its addictiveness, its pulpy predictability lumping it in with other rich-white-people psycho-thrillers. Speaking of, the show’s soundtrack certainly doesn’t help, echoing both the unsettling vocalizations ofAnd while Wright and Cooke are given abundant material to work with as each woman descends further and further into monsters-in-law madness, the rest of the cast is left wanting . Davidson’s Daniel has boyish charm and Paul Mescal-esque good looks, sure, but the character is so blandly written and improbably oblivious that you have to wonder why two alpha females like Laura and Cherry would be at each other’s throats over the dimple-cheeked dolt. Unburdened by that additional story weight, the increasingly outlandish actions of our leads do keep things light, lean, and moving swiftly along, a plus when the mystery has largely been removed from the narrative. And while most thrill seekers might disapprove of the lack of startling twists and turns throughout the show’s six installments,finds ripe drama in the interpersonal, offering up fruitful things to say about perspective, prejudice, and possessiveness. Cherry and Laura’s feud alone is juicy enough to warrant a bite.
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