Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Chloe’ on Prime Video, Where A Woman Assumes A New Persona When Another Woman She’s Obsessed With Dies

A genre of thriller over the past few years has centered around “the dangers of social media.” In other words, someone analyzes someone’s social media and uses that information to weasel their way into their lives, making chaos ensue. But sometimes those shows feel less than well-anchored to an actual story. A new BBC production streaming on Prime Video does that grounding, and does it well.

CHLOE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: An Instagram-like scroll on a phone. You can see the screen in the reflection of they eyes of a woman looking at her phone in the dark.

The Gist: As she scrolls, Becky Green (Erin Doherty) keeps stopping on the feed of a red-haired woman named Chloe Fairbourne (Poppy Gilbert), who seems to be living a charmed life. With each well-shot, curated picture, Becky imagines the pictures in motion, showing Chloe living that life full of friends, fashion, dinner parties, etc.

Becky lives in the same Bristol flat as her mother Pam (Lisa Palfrey), who is showing early signs of Alzheimer’s. Becky goes to her temp job filling in for a pregnant executive assistant; she swipes a co-worker’s colorful jacket and ends up going to a swanky charity party as a woman named Helena. She sleeps with Josh Stanfield (Brandon Micheal Hall), whom she meets at the party, then blocks his number when she thinks he called her overnight.

Then a shocker: Chloe’s feed has a bunch of comments on it indicating that she unexpectedly died. Shocked, she endeavors to meet the people she sees in the feed in order to find out what happened. First is Livia Fulton (Pippa Bennett-Warner), an event planner and one of Chloe’s closest friends. Becky makes a new persona named Sasha and crashes a gallery opening she knows Livia will be planning.

Then, after looking at Livia’s feed, “runs into” her at a yoga class at an exclusive country club, manipulating an invite to her house for dinner when she knows that Chloe’s husband, town councilman Elliot Fairbourne (Billy Howle) will be there. But one complication pops up: Livia knows Josh, and they run into him at the country club.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? At first, Chloe looks like yet another “woman lies her way to becoming close to the woman she’s obsessed with,” like Roku’s Swimming With Sharks or As The Crow Flies on Netflix. But there’s a reason why Becky is obsessed with Chloe, as we find out by the end of the episode.

Our Take: The reason why Becky is so obsessed with Chloe is somewhat predictable, because a piece of the mystery, where Becky gets a call from the local police investigating her death, points to the fact that Becky and Chloe aren’t necessarily complete strangers, as Becky’s scrolling indicated at the beginning of the episode.

But Chloe, created and written by Alice Seabright (Sex Education) rides completely on Doherty’s performance as Becky, as we see her slip from her somewhat dowdy worker drone persona into posh society con woman on the turn of a dime. And it’s fascinating to watch her mine social media to wiggle her way into the life Chloe had, as well as meeting her friends, her husband, and others that might give her a clue about what happened to Chloe.

At the start, it feels like most of Chloe’s friends feel like standard upper-crust British stereotypes, except for Livia; Bennett-Warner gives Livia some depth, making her someone who has a trusting nature and makes fast friends. Within a couple of outings with “Sasha,” Livia already is encouraging her to ask Josh out, and she’s opening up about Chloe’s death. Maybe it stretches credibility that Livia’s guard isn’t more up at that point, but Bennett-Warner makes us believe that Livia is just that kind of person.

But what is ultimately intriguing about Chloe is that, while Becky is an efficient liar and what seems like a pretty good actor, she’s putting on this “Sasha” persona for a reason that’s not just about stalking and obsession. And the rest of the season is going to see her trying to get to the bottom of Chloe’s death while dealing with people like Josh, who know more about her than she would like. As her lies fall to pieces, will she get closer to the answers she needs? That question alone makes us want to watch more.

Sex and Skin: As we mentioned, Becky has sex with Josh, but she keeps her bra on while doing it.

Parting Shot: As she envisions Chloe about to jump off a cliff, she envisions the friend that she knew as a teenager, whom she lost touch with but stalked on social media for years.

Sleeper Star: Jack Farthing plays Richard Greenbank, who interrupts the oh-so-polite dinner party Livia is hosting by ranting that they all messed up when it came to keeping Chloe from killing herself.

Most Pilot-y Line: In one of her weaker excuses, Becky tells Josh that she puts on different personas “because I like to control how people see me. Now. Back. Off.” He says “OK,” but we’d be like, “Are you dangerous or just nuts?” Let’s just say we’ll hear from Josh again.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Because of key performances from Doherty, Hall and Bennett-Warner, Chloe goes from a predictable stalking tale to an entertaining thriller that may take some unexpected turns.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.