Our front page story is about a bright young man making his way through the brutal ranks of chess.
Here is a review of a brilliant short series about the same struggle of personal actualisation through chess, but set in conservative America.
In chess, women are not supposed to win. It’s the 1950s. A young redhead ploughs through college chess players to their shock and horror, defeated by “a lady”. Ugh, that word.
The Queen’s Gambit is long gone on the Netflix Trend list, but sjoe, don’t miss it just because it’s not top 10 it had its victory lap.
We flashback to moments in Beth Harmon’s life. It’s tragedy on tragedy. Her birth mother is a drug addict and failed academic, who feeds her tranquilisers to keep her quiet before driving them both into a truck.
Beth survives. She is also a genius (but that comes later).
She ends up in an orphanage, given institutional drugs to “help” the little girls sleep.
The show doesn’t dress this up. It’s cold. Institutional. The girls are told to be grateful. The adults are polite but empty. Then, down in the orphanage basement is janitor Mr Shaibel.
Gruff and quiet, he lets Beth watch him play chess. Eventually she joins in. That’s where it starts. Her mind catches the rhythm of the game, the moves, the patterns. He gives her tough love, but he gives her purpose and an outlet for genius.
She is a chess prodigy!
She beats men twice her age. Brilliant but lonely, calm on the outside and chaos underneath. The addiction that started in the orphanage never leaves her. She drinks too much. She pushes people away. Every win comes with a cost.
Anya Taylor-Joy plays her with this strange, quiet energy. You can see everything in her face, the small movements, the sharp eyes. She makes chess look like war and art at the same time.
The actress is strikingly alien, a beauty that looks like an avatar come to life with those high cheekbones.
(She is in an amazing movie called the Menu, which I highly recommend.)
The world around her is as much a character as she is. The show’s 1960s sets are all velvet chairs, patterned wallpaper and heavy perfume. It’s beautiful and suffocating, just like Beth’s life.
What makes The Queen’s Gambit hit harder than most dramas is that it never forgets where she came from. The system failed her. Her mother failed her. Every match is another way of surviving.
Mr Shaibel never says it, but he’s the only person who ever truly saw her. Even her adopted mother ultimately sucks on her talent, her adoptive father abandons the family.
It’s beautifully shot, go find it.
