The Queen’s Gambit

The Queen’s Gambit ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Director: Scott Frank. Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chloe Pirrie, Bill Camp

By now I’m probably the last person on the planet who has finally seen what apparently is the most watch TV series on Netflix (I’ve been watching it with my wife and she likes to take it all very very slowly as if “binge-watching” was against her religion).

There are very good reasons why this has been so successful: it’s sumptuous, stylish, engrossing, full of interesting characters (you can also play the “stop the child star” game) and most importantly it’s anchored by a mesmerising central performance by Anya Taylor-Joy. She’s not perfect, or at least her character isn’t, in fact at times she can be hateful, incredibly annoying and she makes mistakes, and yet her presence on the screen is just magnetic: you can’t take your eyes off her and by end she’ll be your heroine.

This is not really re-inventing the wheel: we have seen stories about, addiction, childhood trauma and weird people before, but the real key of this is actual the game of chess at the centre of it all. The success of the series is that it makes this potentially rather boring game to watch one of most exciting thing on television, even if you have no idea how to play (and in which case I’m sure you’ll want to start learning it up after watching this). And by the time you get to the last third minutes of the last episode, you’ll be on the edge of your seat, rooting and cheering and bit moved too.

Enjoyed it very much

On Netflix.