Must-watch tonight! Gripping BBC thriller Wild Cherry is a scandalous social-media whodunnit
A gated community and a clique of teenage girls hiding a secret is the addictive formula of Wild Cherry, BBC’s new mystery drama at the intersection of class and race.
Created by Sweetpea star Nicôle Lecky, who also features as life coach Gigi, Wild Cherry assembles a stacked cast for a tale as old as time with a tech-y hook.
Shedding any trace of fake Gen-Z lingo, the series attempts to show what happens when teens are left to their own devices – literally. The six-parter hinges on a hookup app that’s all the rage among the bored youth of Richford Lake, an idyllic bubble of immense privilege and familial resentment so far removed from real life that it’s more hilarious than infuriating.
The masterminds are besties Allegra (Amelia May) and Grace (Imogen Faires), popular students at the local all-girl, almost all-white private school.
The duo hatch a plan to reclaim the narrative and their bodies and raise some cash in the process, though the selectively concerned parents and conservative school staff may not exactly commend them for their entrepreneurial spirit.
BBC
As the scandal threatens to come to the surface, Allegra’s and Grace’s mums, author and self-proclaimed parenthood expert Juliet (House of the Dragon‘s Eve Best) and business mogul Lorna (The Penguin‘s Carmen Ejogo), are initially unfazed. Things change when a twist pits Allegra and Grace against each other, forcing their mums to take sides.
With the first two episodes premiering tonight on BBC One and iPlayer, Wild Cherry ticks all the boxes of a textbook teen drama with a frank approach to technology.
The series doesn’t sensationalise kids’ relationships with their phones, while not shying away from the most insidious aspects of being constantly available and connected.
BBC
The secrecy that shrouds app The Catalogue makes it something of a 2.0 version of the Burn Book in Mean Girls, if you will. Under the guise of telling their stories and controlling their own bodies, all the subscribers set themselves up to pay a price that’s much higher than the joining fee. It’s leverage that can quickly turn into bullying in the wrong hands.
The girls, particularly, cave to the pressures of giving up pieces of themselves to play the game, but they’ll hardly end up winning. Iris (Catriona Chandler), Allegra and Grace’s friend who goes missing after being accused of being a snitch, knows this all too well.
Criminal implications aside, Wild Cherry explores the terror instilled by teenage girls’ sexuality as something powerful, uncontrollable, and, most crucially, to be sanctioned as “lewd”, as the principal puts it, as opposed to natural.
BBC
The double standards are alive and kicking in the series, as Lecky cleverly exposes how the girls and their mothers may be making terrible decisions in response to men’s actions and are left to take the brunt of their choices. The men, on the other hand, breeze through the world of Wild Cherry unscathed.
Juliet and Lorna are as central to the narrative as their daughters are. The two women have their fair share of skeletons in their carefully curated closets and their own peculiar unhappiness to conceal to maintain their standing in the community.
An external observer who revels in the schadenfreude served up to the key players is American lifestyle guru Gigi (Lecky), an outsider from an ambiguous background who is Allegra’s life coach. Gigi may practice love and light, but is dying to graduate from her ‘new wife’ status and finally be accepted by the group — and isn’t afraid to stir the pot if it helps her mission.
Hers are the voiceovers accompanying each episode, with Lecky inspired by a real-life curiosity for the gilded, guarded world of gated communities.
BBC
“One of the reasons I wrote Wild Cherry is because I used to drive through this private gated community in Surrey. There are a few of those places, and I would look at these beautiful homes and mansions and think, ‘Who lives there?’ So, I really wanted to tell a story about towns like this,” Lecky explained. “I felt like we hadn’t seen this side of England before.”
Swapping Monterey for leafy Surrey, the UK’s response to Big Little Lies may not reinvent the wheel, but it makes for an intriguing, gripping puzzle of complex intricacies.
Lecky’s witty writing and amusing critique of white feminism make sure Wild Cherry stays a tragicomedy, even when a hazy series of flash forwards hints at a bloody accident waiting to happen, in classic whodunit fashion.
Wild Cherry premieres on BBC One and iPlayer at 9pm on Saturday 15 November.
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Reporter, Digital Spy
Stefania is a freelance writer specialising in TV and movies. After graduating from City University, London, she covered LGBTQ+ news and pursued a career in entertainment journalism, with her work appearing in outlets including Little White Lies, The Skinny, Radio Times and Digital Spy.
Her beats are horror films and period dramas, especially if fronted by queer women. She can argue why Scream is the best slasher in four languages (and a half).
