Wild Cherry Review – This fun, action-packed thriller seems to have spent most of its budget on clothes | television

TIts ultra-rich characters live in a place called Richford Lake, which tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the shiny new thriller Wild Cherry. Yes, it’s another entry in the increasingly popular eating the rich genre. Yes, it has shades of The White Lotus and everything starring Nicole Kidman over the past five years. Yes, most of the budget has gone to the wardrobe, as any woman over 30 seems to be allergic to synthetic fibres, and each actor seems to highlight primarily their ability to carry off herringbone silks and cashmere in warm beige tones. Yes, you should have bought shares in Colorful Camel years ago, but it’s too late now. Yes, the insular community and soapy atmosphere point to an origin that includes Desperate Housewives and Gossip Girl. Yes, in short, it’s pretentious garbage. But rubbish with pretenses is as enjoyable a way to spend long winter evenings as any, so why not put your mind aside and enjoy it?

We begin with the obligatory future-forward scene, which here involves four women — two older, two younger — standing in a well-appointed bathroom in their underwear, cleaning blood off their hands. We then go back in time for the six-part journey to find out what’s going on.

The four women are a support for mothers and their daughters. One mother is Juliet. She’s played by Eve Best with a reserve inappropriate in the kind of production that needs a “To hell with Ibsen!” The attitude of everyone to make it work. Juliet is described by none-yet-yet voice-over as “old money”, and thus deeply concerned with reputation and appearance, although in real life these matters are largely the domain of new money, which has no breeding to back it up. Even — no, especially — in soap, getting that kind of thing right is important.

Anyway, Juliet is also a supermom and loves to wear cashmere clothes, so she’s in the middle of releasing her first book, about how to be the perfect mom and raise teenagers “who can become your best friends.” It is a flagship title of Hubris Books, an imprint of Come On Now Publishing. When she finishes a publicity interview and gets a happy look from the young sound man, she is summoned to her daughter’s (posh, private girls’) school to be told that 15-year-old Allegra (Amelia May) and her best friend Grace (Imogen Ferris) have been spotted in a now-deleted “saucy video” that one of her fellow pupils showed the teacher. Grace’s mother, Lorna (Carmen Ejogo), Juliet’s best friend despite being a self-made businesswoman rather than a descendant of a lord, is called to the meeting as well. She was shocked, but as she reeled, Juliet continued the attack, warning the headmaster of the “sexual shame” of teenage girls and reminding him of the large donations her family had made to his small educational foundation over the years. The problem disappears.

Or is it? It turns out that Grace and embryonic influencer Allegra, unbeknownst to their parents, are adding a touch of mean girls and heather to the grandparents’ mix. They built an app centered around a “catalogue,” which eventually turned out to be a collection of sexy snaps taken of themselves and their friends (male and female, but mostly female), which paid subscribers to the app could vote on. I am sure that the desire to reach the top of the exciting league will lead to a variety of very reasonable decisions by everyone.

Meanwhile, the adult world isn’t full of good ideas either. Juliet goes off and beats up the sound man, allowing Allegra and Grace (while asleep) to sneak into a party held at the home of an older male creator with whom Allegra imagines a blossoming business relationship. A newcomer to the neighborhood, Gigi (Nicole Leckie, who’s also Wild Cherry’s showrunner), tries to befriend all the awful women there — who dismiss her as either a gold-digger (she’s the second wife of a recently divorced rich scoundrel) or a tacky entrepreneur — and ends up standing in the middle of her indoor swimming pool in despair.

Obviously nothing will end well, but that doesn’t matter. There are signs along the way that Wild Cherry wants to solve big questions — it points out the intersection between racial and class bias, and aims to critique money-bought privilege while drooling over its material trappings — but it had better stick with that or develop a suitably rich froth that would put it firmly in the category of escapist nonsense. As is, it’s still fun enough to run.