The Girlfriend Review
Director: Robin Wright and Andrea Harkin
Date Created: 2025-09-10 16:43
2.5
The Girlfriend Review: Based on Michelle Frances’ bestselling book, Prime Video’s psychological thriller series is directed by Robin Wright and Andrea Harkin. It contains a total of six episodes and features Wright as Laura, Olivia Cooke as Cherry, Laurie Davidson as Daniel and many more. It revolves around a well-off mom whose tranquil life falls apart as her son brings home his new lady friend. What begins as a strained family drama quickly turns into fibs, obsession, and manipulation.
The Girlfriend Review
The concept for The Girlfriend Series was very interesting, though. A protective mom, a dark past for the girlfriend, and a cat-and-mouse game for the two women; it was a recipe for a tense and compulsively viewing show. Even the pilot did a good job of familiarising us with Laura’s initial distrust of Cherry. As the series went on, though, the tension grew stale. Instead of having tension build, the same distrust pattern was repeated, and before we could say it was getting a bit stretched out.
One of the things that kept me from dropping it halfway was the acting. Robin Wright brings depth to Laura, although the script very often makes her paranoid more than bright. Olivia Cooke was inconsistent; you are both intensely sympathetic to her, then intensely suspicious of her. Both their confrontations had real bite, and for me, were the only places in the series where it came fully to life. Without them, the series had folded up completely.
As a thriller fan, I go in expecting the surprises to blow my mind or at least make me question what I just saw. But in our instance, most of the so-called surprises were contrived. A perfect example is where Laura lies to Cherry that Daniel’s dead after his accident. Rather than it being a dark thought experiment, it was absurd. It did not make me cheer for Laura for being manipulative, but it made me question the sense of the writing. And when Cherry does not put it together in a flash, it does not help her character much either. It was a stare-down of two bright ladies, but far too often, both of them just emerged ditsy.
One of my major complaints with The Girlfriend series is the way they’ve depicted the relationship between Daniel and Laura. It’s done in an attempt to portray Laura’s toxic and manipulative behaviour towards her son as a mother, but too many of those moments were uncomfortable to watch for my taste, more than illuminating. You see them struggle in a pool at one point, and in lieu of mother-son intimacy, it sounded awkward. I realised what the director was trying to do: emphasise Laura’s obsessiveness, but for me, it crossed into cringe for no apparent reason.
By the last episode, I was accustomed to the trend for the series to bounce back with a good ending. Unfortunately, it did the opposite. Laura drugging her own child just to frame Cherry, only for things to get out of hand until Daniel kills her in a freak accident, was not shocking in and of itself, but infuriating.
I was expecting a payoff where either Cherry’s machinations are exposed in a fulfilling manner or Laura’s paranoia pays off in a fulfilling manner. Instead, the payoff was a flimsy means of tying up loose ends and putting Daniel in the midst of Cherry’s manipulations. It was not a touching ending in a deep sense for me — it was just not fulfilling.
If Prime Video series The Girlfriend does anything well, it’s the high-gloss looks. Expensive homes, sheer Spanish locations, the series looks wealthy and high-style. However, past a certain point, it seemed producers were hiding bad storylines behind attractive scenery. Class differences between Laura’s world and Cherry’s background could’ve been a tremendous theme, but the series barely scratched the surface before not going further.
The more I think about it, the more I see why the series did not work out for me. Instead of a tight psychological war, what we had was redundant drama, far-fetched twists, and more annoying than interesting personalities. Daniel, in particular, was portrayed as a passive and obtuse lead protagonist, and in many cases, I was asking myself why both women were fighting over him. He did not add much substance to the story — he only made the plot go sour.
I do not desire to go on to say that The Girlfriend Series had not one redeeming feature whatsoever. Its premise of events unfolding from different viewpoints was interesting, though not consistently handled flawlessly. And Wright’s and Cooke’s acting did most definitely hold my attention. But good acting in and of itself cannot save a tale that stumbles repeatedly over the same ideals.
Prime Video The Girlfriend Review: Summing Up
Ultimately, Prime Video’s The Girlfriend is a bright but hollow thriller. It could’ve been a tight, predictable thriller exploration of obsession and possessiveness, but it opted for melodrama and cliché. If you can stomach fantastic performances and aren’t finicky regarding a slow-burning format, you might find something for you herein. If you desire a thriller to leave you breathless and on the edge of your seat, you won’t find it herein.
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