{"id":527887,"date":"2026-07-01T16:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T16:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/527887\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T16:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T16:40:09","slug":"wild-cherry-on-rte-one-bingeably-ridiculous-capering-tale-of-rich-peoples-bad-behaviour-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/527887\/","title":{"rendered":"Wild Cherry on RT\u00c9 One: Bingeably ridiculous capering tale of rich people\u2019s bad behaviour \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mashing together eat-the-rich romp Saltburn<\/a> with the kids-are-doomed morality play Adolescence<\/a> sounds like the worst idea this side of giving celebrities their own podcasts. But that\u2019s what\u2019s on offer with Wild Cherry (RT\u00c9 One<\/a>, Wednesday, 10.15pm), a bingeably ridiculous melodrama from actor and playwright Nic\u00f4le Lecky.<\/p>\n

The capering tale of bad behaviour in a fictional English village of Richford Lake (they indeed called it thus) originally aired on the BBC last November. It now wends its way through its six-episode run on RT\u00c9. For the benefit of anyone who missed it first time around, it blends riotous scenes of horribly rich people being dreadful (bing! Saltburn) with a bleak storyline about teenage girls being creeped on by strangers on the internet (which is where it carries on the work begun by Adolescence).<\/p>\n

On paper, it reads like a blizzard of bad taste. Yet the show somehow walks the line between glossy soap and gritty drama. In that, it is helped by a cast that know when to put their eyes out on stalks and when to reel it in and do some actual acting.<\/p>\n

The lead character in whose downfall we are invited to exult is Juliet, played by Eve Best with finely judged loathsomeness. Best was last seen romping around on a fire-breathing lizard in House of the Dragon<\/a>. Now she is blowing smoke as the author of a self-help book, How To Parent Your Teens \u2013 PS, They Can Be Your Best Friends.<\/p>\n

As is often the case with down-wiv-the-kids parents, she has plenty of issues going on at home, specifically, a wayward daughter named Allegra (a brilliantly awful Amelia May) who is running wild around her by selling explicit images to online creeps. Of which there is, of course, an infinite supply.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV: 10 of the best new shows to watch in JulyOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The show is serious about the key rule of modern entertainment that bad things should be seen to happen to rich people. But it weaves that into a grim warning that we really should be paying attention to what our teenagers are doing with their phones<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It is also smart enough to raise the stakes by chucking in a body with the murder of Iris, a girl at the exclusive school attended by Allegra and her friend Grace (Imogen Faires), whose mum, Lorna (Carmen Ejogo<\/a>), is a more sensible best pal to Juliet. Plus there is Juliet\u2019s husband Raef (James Murray), a nasty piece of work and wildly jealous of his wife\u2019s success.<\/p>\n

A less accomplished series would struggle to both satirise the rich and make a very serious point about the risks the internet poses to teenagers. Wild Cherry pulls it off with a verve that is often silly, occasionally ridiculous and always watchable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mashing together eat-the-rich romp Saltburn with the kids-are-doomed morality play Adolescence sounds like the worst idea this side…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,10526,61,60,6085],"class_list":["post-527887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-house-of-the-dragon","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-rte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}