If you like not knowing where a show will go next, thenAlice Seabrite’sChloeis the mysterythrillerfor you.ChloefollowsErin Doherty’s Becky Green as she infiltrates the friendship group of Chloe Fairbourne (Poppy Gilbert), an estranged childhood friend who called Becky the night she committed suicide. As Becky digs deeper into the group’s history, she uncovers more cracks behind what she thought was the perfect life, and her paranoia only makes her obsession for the truth around Chloe’s death greater.Chloeis not only Doherty’s triumph as an actor leading a show with so much presence and nuance, but reveals the murky private relationships people havethat we don’t see on social media. Yet Becky’s character is not all lies and deceit, as her relationship with Josh (Brandon Micheal Hall) allows us to see what could be perceived as the real Becky, so long as she hasn’t fooled all of us the entire time.
Erin Doherty Makes Us Scared of Becky Yet Enthralled By Sasha in ‘Chloe’
When Becky is able to lie her way into the friendship group, she tells Livia (Pippa Bennett-Warner), Chloe’s best friend, that her name is Sasha. So begins a clear distinction between Doherty’s characters' personalities. As we see throughout the scenes where she is pretending, Becky is so much more comfortable and confident when she is, metaphorically, wearing somebody else’s skin. Arguably, the first display of Becky is the realest we get. In bed, scrolling on her phone, barely a personality to be seen. Yet, when she is Sasha, she is personable and able to hold a conversation about nearly anything.The ability of Doherty to seamlessly switch between Becky and Sasha is so impressive. The longer it goes on, and the two personalities begin to merge, the more stressed Becky becomes, caught in her own web of lies.
‘Chloe’ Shows Us the Dangers of Believing What We See on Social Media
As mentioned, the first time we see Becky is when she is scrolling through Chloe’s Instagram and she sees that Chloe is dead. This, as well as the missed call she finds from Chloe the night she died, sparks Becky to infiltrate her friendship group. It appears she did this at first to feel what a perfect life was, as that is what she believes Chloe had.However, we see how all the people closest to Chloe, her friends Richard (Jack Farthing), Liv, and her husband Elliot (Billy Howle), all had fractured relationships with Chloe.Many of the characters remark that they’re not sure they ever really knew her, a line that has increasing irony behind it as Becky settles more and more into the group. In the end, Becky is drawn into a messy situation she could never have imagined, andthe entire group is broken by their perceptions of each other, contradicting their reality.
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Josh Gives Us a Chance To See Becky Without a Mask in ‘Chloe’
Perhaps my favorite scenes were between Josh and Becky. Josh is the only one to know Becky’s secret from the immediate get-go, as she had lied to him using a previous identity on a previous night to meet Chloe’s friends. The scenes these two share have an honesty that isn’t present in every other interaction Becky has, and it allows the relationship that blossoms to feel natural and more satisfying. However, because of Becky’s role as the unreliable narrator, making up ideas of how people see her in her head, the scenes also have a mysterious undercurrent, aswe never know when we are seeing the real Beckyor whether even this is a game to keep Josh from telling the others.
In the end,Chloeis a show that will have you guessing until the very final scene. Not only is Erin Doherty superb in the role as the unreliable Becky, but the entire world she finds herself in is a murky cesspool of appearances and lies. Ultimately, her deceit is so impressive that even we, the audience, cannot always tell if we are looking at Becky, Sasha, or some combination of the two.
All episodes ofChloeare available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S.
After her friend’s unexpected death, a woman grows increasingly fascinated with the seemingly perfect life her friend led, as portrayed through social media. Her investigation leads her to adopt different personas to infiltrate the exclusive circles of her late friend, uncovering unsettling truths about identity and obsession in the digital age.
