Imagine meeting the love of your life. He’s kind, attractive, successful, and sufficiently untraumatized. Everything is perfect. Then you get introduced to his mother, and she hates you. Actually, you hate her, too. Cue a thrilling yet utterly unhinged struggle for power that is as compelling as it is Oedipal.

This is the war waged by Olivia Cooke’s character, Cherry, in The Girlfriend , the Prime Video psychological drama based on Michelle Frances’s 2017 novel of the same name. Her antagonist is Laura (played by Robin Wright, who also directed the series), a wealthy art gallery owner who will do anything to protect her son, Daniel (Laurie Davidson), from the lower-class Cherry’s apparently wily and vulpine ways.

The opening scene sums it up best: “Laura, put the knife down!” shouts Ch

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