Author Patricia Highsmith wrote her first of several novels about Tom Ripley, a successful con man, in 1955. Four decades later, that first book, The Talented Mr. Ripley, was adapted into a 1999 movie, starring a young Matt Damon. Now, 25 years later, it’s being adapted again — this time as an eight-part Netflix miniseries called Ripley.
There are a few things you should know about this new miniseries right at the start — and I hope that each of them will help persuade you to tune in and watch. One is that all eight episodes of this new adaptation are written and directed by Steven Zaillian, who directed and wrote the screenplay for Searching for Bobby Fischer, co-wrote the screenplay for Moneyball, and wrote the screenplays for Schindler’s List, Awakenings and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Another is that this new Ripley entrusts the title role of con artist Tom Ripley to Andrew Scott. If his name isn’t familiar, he’s the handsome young actor who got international recognition for appearing in the second season of Fleabag — in a role commonly referred to as “the hot priest.”
And there’s a third truly noteworthy aspect to Netflix’s Ripley: All eight episodes are in black and white — a rarity for modern TV. Ripley is set in the early 1960s, but the choice of shooting in black and white clearly is based on an aesthetic. Director Zaillian and cinematographer Robert Elswit make the most of it, presenting stunning images of Italian landscapes, art and architecture, as well as piercing closeups worthy of the best film noir.
Keeping the story of Ripley rooted in its original time period also is more than stylistically satisfying — it’s crucial. Ripley was a grifter whose cons worked primarily because the passage of information then was so slow — no cellphones, no internet and plenty of ways to intercept, or lose, things in the mail. Back then, pulling his scams, Ripley could get away with murder. And eventually, he tries to.
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