One Of The Best Shows Of 2024 Lands On Netflix Today

Updated April 6th 2024. See update below.

Ripley is one of the most intriguing series I’ve seen in a long time. I haven’t finished it yet, but it’s absolutely engrossing so far. I’ll have a full review later, but for now wanted to give a spoiler-free recommendation to add this show to your watch-list.

The limited series is based on the book The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. The first three of her “Ripliad” novels have been adapted into films five times. Many of her other works have been as well, but this is the first full adaptation of the novel for TV (scenes from the novels were adapted into the 1982 series A Gift Of Murder).

Here’s the trailer:

Check out my weekend streaming guide right here:

Ripley the series was written and directed by Steven Zaillian, the writer of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, for which he won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA. The extraordinary cinematography—which I’ll talk a bit more about below—was helmed by Robert Elswit, who won an Academy Award for There Will Be Blood.

The series feels expensive in a way that very few have on Netflix in recent years. It’s entirely shot in black and white. Gorgeous shots of New York City, the Italian seaside and other locations are at once beautiful and haunting. This, along with the gorgeous score composed by Jeff Russo (Fargo series, What Remains Of Edith Finch the video game, The Night Of series, etc.) makes every scene feel ominous and unsettling. It feels very much like an old film noir, right down to the dialogue, but with all the modern technology to make it perfectly crisp. This version of Ripley is cold and colorless, echoing its chief protagonist’s own chill aura.

Tom Ripley is played this time by Andrew Scott, who you’ll recognize from all sorts of things from Sherlock, where he played Sherlock’s nemesis, Moriarty, to the priest from the wonderfully odd Fleabag. Here, he plays the titular character with grim perfection. His American accent is flawless. There’s a dreadfulness clinging to him, a hollowness behind the eyes.

The other two main stars are Johnny Flynn (Lovesick) as the rich American expatriate playboy, Dickie Greenleaf, and Dakota Fanning as Dickie’s girlfriend, Marge Sherwood, who is both a writer and far more suspicious of Ripley than the rather mellow Greenleaf. The last thing I saw Fanning in was Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. She plays a much different character here. Both provide captivating performances, even if the lens is mainly focused on Ripley and his monstrous ambitions.

How these three’s lives intertwine I will not discuss here—no spoilers, remember, even though many people have read the books or seen previous adaptations, including the 1999 Matt Damon version.

Suffice to say, it’s a very tense and engrossing watch, but also a very, very slow burn. If you’re impatient and don’t care for slower crime dramas, this might not be for you. If you like to soak in the views—truly some of the most impressive, ambitious, daring cinematography I’ve ever seen—and don’t mind a slower thriller that’s really devoted to character study first, you should give Ripley a watch. There’s nothing else like it on Netflix, and really nothing else like it on TV.

I’ll post my spoiler-filled review later, so be sure to subscribe to this blog and follow me Twitter and Facebook where you can also let me know what you think of this show.

I wouldn’t say critics that critics are divided about Ripley. Not exactly, anyways. But they are not singing its praises in unison. That’s the funny thing about looking at sites like Rotten Tomatoes. Especially when it comes to television shows, the results can be misleading for various reasons, which I discuss at length in this video.

Currently, Ripley is at just 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, and slightly lower if you look at the 77% audience score. It’s remarkable to me that a show of this quality is scoring lower than Season 2 of Reacher or the recent True Detective: Night Country. I do understand that it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but it’s still a little baffling. I think this is partly because reviewers were given screeners for the entire season, while many times critics only get access to the first episode or two then base their review on that only.

In any case, let’s take a look at some of the reviews, both good and bad.

“Scott captures Ripley’s cold, calculating and reptilian charm, and his performance alone is enough to carry the miniseries,” Cary Darling writes at the Houston Chronicle.

Helen Hawkins at The Arts Desk disagrees, writing “You emerge from this empty monochrome world craving crowds, colour, disarray and, above all, a sense of what’s happening below its super-controlled surface. Ripley here is a noir anti-hero… but not really Highsmith’s horribly intriguing sociopath.”

Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times is bothered most by the casting. He says that while he has enormous respect for all the cast members, “I just felt they weren’t right for the characters they’re playing in this vehicle.”

Some spoilers in this next quoted passage:

He explains:

In the 1999 film, Dickie was just two years out of college, and the actors playing Tom, Dickie and Marge were all in their 20s. They were peers. They were young and, in some cases, hopelessly naïve. Here, with the 47-year-old Scott playing Tom and the 41-year-old Johnny Flynn as Dickie, are we to believe Tom has been a grifter for at least two decades, while Dickie has been squandering his potential for nearly that long?

Also problematic: The Tom we see in New York City isn’t a particularly skilled con artist. But once he arrives in Italy, he turns into a savant who becomes fluent in Italian and masterminds an elaborate scheme in which he impersonates Dickie, commits heinous crimes and makes a fool out of the inspector (Maurizio Lombardi) in charge of investigating those crimes. It’s a whiplash of a transformation.

It’s solid reasoning, though I think it bothered me much less. I was a little confused by the lack of grifting skills on display in New York City, however.

Rob Owen echoes many of these complaints, calling the show a “bore” and arguing that the 1999 film with Matt Damon was far superior.

“No wonder Showtime, which originally ordered and made this “Ripley,” bailed and sold it off to the No. 1 streaming service. “Ripley” is a stinker,” Owen writes. He points readers to the new period drama Mary & George instead, which is one of the shows I included in this weekend’s streaming guide.

The BBC’s Caryn James is more upbeat, writing: “The show is brilliantly shot in black and white by the Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Elswit, creating a beautiful shadowy look that intensifies the creepy feeling. And writer and director Steven Zaillian makes his smart script compulsively watchable. Ripley plays as if it were a Hitchcock series Hitchcock never made.”

Whether you enjoy Ripley or not, one thing I think everyone can agree on is that it’s a slow burn.

“Ripley, the series, requires something that is not abundant these days,” Diego Batlle writes. “Patience and concentration.”

What are your thoughts, dearest readers? Let me know on Twitter and Facebook.