If Adolescence made us worry about our sons, Wild Cherry will have us fretting for our daughters

The main character, Juliet, is played by the fabulous Eve Best. She has written a book called How To Parent Your Teens – PS, They Can Be Your Best Friends. Uh-oh. I don’t need to tell you that this boundary-less, BFF style of parenting does not have good outcomes. In Juliet’s case, her daughter is Allegra (an eye-catching performance from newcomer Amelia May), an absolute horror of a 16-year-old who rules the roost at her exclusive private school. She is determined to be a social media star, which leads her down some dangerous roads.

“We might feel this urge to monitor our teenagers’ every move and hover over them, becoming the dreaded ‘helicopter’. But I promise you that there is nothing that your children are doing that is anything worse than anything you or I did,” an oblivious Juliet reassures other mothers at her book launch. Cut to Allegra and friends posing in bikinis and balaclavas for pictures that will be circulated online. And there’s worse where that came from.

The other key characters are Allegra’s best friend, Grace (Imogen Faires), and her mother, Lorna (Carmen Ejogo). Lorna doesn’t agree with Juliet’s pie-in-the-sky parenting but hopes that her own daughter is the sensible one. Unfortunately, teenage girls just aren’t sensible. They have always sneaked around, lusted after boys and tried to act older than they are. I’m sure that, 20 or 30 years ago, teens drew up lists to rate which girl was the “hottest”. But here it’s done online, and they are egged on to post their most provocative pictures. In this social media age, immature choices can have devastating consequences.