‘The Girlfriend’: Robin Wright and Olivia Cooke Turn ‘Psycho’ Dynamic Around, but Keep It in the Family

Tony Sokol

Like mother, like potential daughter-in-law, “The Girlfriend” is a tale of two psychos. Based on Michelle Frances’ 2017 novel, this eight-episode Prime Video limited series is a blistering and paranoid take on congenital competition and toxic territoriality.  

Olivia Cooke plays the title character, Cherry Laine, a cutthroat real estate agent, as the obvious predator. She is Daniel Sanderson’s (Laurie Davidson) new girlfriend. It was love at first sight for Daniel, followed by a whirlwind romance. His father is Howard Sanderson (Waleed Zuaiter), whose wealth is vaguely tied to being a noteworthy hotel tycoon. Now a grown trauma surgeon, Daniel is something of a mama’s boy, conservatively a notch less dependent than Anthony Perkins’ Norman Bates in “Psycho.” Daniel’s mother, Laura Sanderson (Robin Wright), an upscale art dealer with a few recent failures under her belt, sees Cherry as a possible gold digger, social climber, or potentially worse, and Daniel as her prey.

Laura is suspicious of the new girlfriend at first sight, and why wouldn’t she be? Cherry always looks like she’s about to get caught. For the most part, this is because she sneaks around quite a bit. But even during seemingly normal conversation, Cherry’s eyes dart and her eyebrows furrow worriedly. When questioned, the new girlfriend dodges details, and excuses herself from rooms during follow-ups. To be fair, Laura’s intensive inquisitions feel like a crusade. Both characters wage scorched-earth strategies. Each stockpile tidbits of emotional ammunition to fire at the other, all of which are telegraphed to the audience. The fiercely clever mother bear is stupid enough to confide a secret to the very rival she distrusts early in their relationship. Cherry’s own butcher shop-owning mum, Tracey (Karen Henthorn), tells too much too soon to a known stranger with too many malicious intentions.

Cherry has more than a few skeletons in her closet. The most recent left over from a vendetta served as only a daughter of a butcher can: inserting bloody entrails into the wedding cake of a former boyfriend. Laura is not boneless herself, pushing and retracting an open marriage proposal to the very picture of a long-suffering husband who has been benched for too many seasons, while dabbling in the finer arts with her former lover, Lilith (Anna Chancellor), on deck and waiting.

“The Girlfriend” is structured to play into the increasingly bipolar opposition. Each scenario is laid out at the beginning of the episode, title cards announce shifts as the causal events are told from the separate perspectives of Cherry or Laura. The contrasting POV captures all the sequences leading up to each climax, while manipulating the perceived motivations through omitted details. The alternative angles add a chess match feel to a game of tennis, as each serve is countered by the backswing of a lucky return. Even with the dueling psychological narratives and multiple unexpected turns, “The Girlfriend” is predictable and offers no real surprises.

Set in present-day London, with less-than-picturesque trips to Málaga on Spain’s Southern Mediterranean coast, the class-consciousness of the mother-girlfriend altercation mirrors the closed-door policy of Britain’s privileged hierarchy. In the beginning, Daniel is living in his parent’s Victorian villa in St. John’s Wood in Westminster, a pricey piece of real estate his girlfriend wouldn’t even be authorized to sell. Laura’s confidante, Isabella Russell-Bailey (Tanya Moody), attempts to vet Cherry as the possible successor to her own daughter Brigitte (Shalom Brune-Franklin), a sister figure to Daniel, who was nonetheless his first lover. Cameras force focus to best fetishize the most incestuous angles of any shot, but reinforce a soap opera quality without oedipal complexity.

Cherry is suspected of chasing money and ambition. She is accused of stealing prime real estate property opportunities at her job, after being passed over for promotion regardless of her sales record. The agency is too quick to dismiss Cherry over an obvious hacking attack. Sadly, other unrealistic technological abilities, such as those Laura uses to steal passwords and redirect calls, are far more distracting.

The working class Cherry preemptively cops to most of her lies, such as trading in a first-class air ticket in order to spend the difference on clothes to impress Daniel’s formidable parents. Early in the series, Daniel irks Cherry with his overbearingly competitive nature. Laura’s instant animosity propels the narrative irresistibly to a climactic confrontation. There is no mystery in the plot but the execution of the escalation. The avoidable power struggle, and the cat-and-mouse game of vengeful one-upmanship becomes increasingly repetitive as each variation gets more obvious.

Wright directed the first three episodes, with Irish filmmaker Andrea Harkin helming the final three, and each episode builds on the unique mother and girlfriend dynamic to dizzying heights. “The Girlfriend” is escapist psychological warfare which wins in a single battle, but won’t inspire rematches or rewatches.

“The Girlfriend” begins streaming Sept. 10 on Prime Video.