A glossy new British thriller
Dear Watchers,In “Wild Cherry,” the BBC thriller making its American debut on Wednesday, on Paramount+, the toniest residents of the fictional British town of Richford Lake live in a wealthy gated community nicknamed the Island. But in this watchable tale of the haves and have-mores, status is based more on whom you know than on how rich you are. Or, as one character tells another, “You might have money, but you have zero class.” This divide sharpens when scandal strikes Richford Lake’s exclusive all-girls school, pitting Lorna (Carmen Ejogo), the scrappy chief executive of a financial firm, against her longtime friend Juliet (Eve Best), who comes from “old money” and has a father in Parliament. After a sexually suggestive video featuring their daughters materializes, the other parents and school administrators rally mostly around Juliet while slowly ostracizing Lorna, who is Black and lives outside “The Island.” Grace (Imogen Faires), Lorna’s daughter, rises early to row crew and is a conscientious student. Recognizing she has to be “better than everyone else,” as she puts it, Grace nonetheless chafes under the weight of her mother’s expectations. Allegra (Amelia May), Juliet’s daughter, is a stereotypical queen bee who runs roughshod over the school and her hapless mother. When they aren’t sidelined, fathers are often an afterthought, except for Steven (Nathaniel Martello-White), Lorna’s well-meaning but clueless husband. The series also covers, with mixed success, a laundry list of topical issues like teen exploitation and the cult of social media influencers. Like other dramas centered on the 1 percent, including “The White Lotus” and “Big Little Lies,” “Wild Cherry” is preoccupied with surfaces and what lies beneath them. And there are many surfaces to ogle: manicured lawns, ivy-covered brick, gleaming white interiors. Juliet’s life might have the glossiest surface of all. Glamorous, married to a former cricket star and the author of a new book unironically titled “How to Parent Your Teens (P.S. They Can Be Your Best Friends),” she hears repeatedly that her life is “perfect.” Yet, her husband sleeps around (and in a separate room), her daughter treats her with disdain, and her book is dismissed as “out of touch.” Juliet could easily have been a punchline, but Best’s performance humanizes her. And her chemistry with Ejogo as they weather the fallout from their daughters’ choices grounds the show’s more outlandish turns in real, emotionally resonant stakes. Also this week
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