Ripley, mini-series (2024)
The genius of Patricia Highsmith's original idea is so inescapable that it is no surprise the first book has spawned no less than three screen adaptations. Purple Noon (1960) with Alain Delon, The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) with Matt Damon and now the mini-series Ripley with Andrew Scott. With the first two adaptations being so iconic, did we really need a new one?
Strangely, we did. With its discomforting black-and-white aesthetics (at times, Ripley feels like Tarkovsky filming Kafka), the TV series sucks you in from the very beginning. And when the squalor of a tiny New York apartment gives way to the splendour of Italy, the magic hypnotism is complete. Ripley goes on for eight hour-long episodes, which allows the director Steven Zaillian to really delve into the details (the boat scene in particular is truly mortifying, and takes a full episode).
Andrew Scott is brilliant, and so is Dakota Fanning as Marge Sherwood. Lacking that sinister spark, Matt Damon never really worked for me, and neither did Gwyneth Paltrow who looked plain and depthless in the 1999 adaptation. With the young Greenleaf, it is a little bit trickier as Jude Law was the perfect Dickie (for all my love for Johnny Flynn, he never stood a chance). Finally, while Eliot Sumner (Sting's child, incidentally) does an intriguing turn as Dickie's friend Freddie Miles, it is quite impossible to improve on Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Getting back to Andrew Scott, neither Delon nor Damon went this deep into the harrowing psyche of Tom Ripley, one of literature's greatest con-men, but also someone who disgusts and fascinates in equal measure. "I offered you my friendship and asked for nothing in return".
The Dry, Season 2 (2024)
The Dry is an Irish TV show, half-comedy and half-drama, which is set in modern-day Dublin and deals with a young woman named Shiv Sheridan and one truly dysfunctional family. Alcohol, Dublin, a little bit of art. In other words, what is not to like?
The whole thing is somewhat predictable but also great fun. In Season 1, a young artist (played by Roisin Gallagher) comes back from London to deal with her issues (mostly alcohol addiction and proclivity for bad romance). Instead, the issues become ever more evident as she returns, essentially, to the very place that caused all those problems in the first place. In her broken, largely unsupportive family, however, no one gets spared. This second season, out this year, is more of the same: awkward relationships, wine hidden in the toilet bowl, old flames and quite a bit of black humour.
One thing I have to add: I really do not like these Fleabag comparisons. Whereas Fleabag tried too hard and felt contrived, The Dry seems effortless and quite charming. A real joy to watch.
Fallout, Season 1 (2024)
Fallout is without a doubt this year's most acclaimed TV show. I felt a little apprehensive going into this as I have no concept of the computer game this is based on. All I knew, and this you could easily get from the title, is that Fallout is about the state of the world following some major nuclear disaster.
I was rather annoyed at first. This whole aesthetic of combining brutal violence (and it is quite brutal, almost comically so) with the charming innocence of the Ink Spots and Billie Holiday grew stale in no time at all. I mean, how long can you look at chunks of human flesh flying around to the music of Bob Crosby?.. And yet the makers of Fallout stuck with it, up to that very point where you just had to accept the sheer grotesqueness of the whole thing (through gritted teeth, in my case).
And now, having watched the full season, I will say that the most fascinating aspect of Fallout is how it manages to straddle that fine line between the silliness and the gore. For that is exactly what they do here. And, in a way, it becomes quite absorbing. I never cared for the characters, Fallout does not really pull you in emotionally, but the sheer stretch of the imagination is overwhelming. Plus, all the narrative hooks are carefully placed and you are ever looking forward to whatever comes next.
Fallout succeeds in creating its own world, a world which is deranged and quite unique at the same time. And this, come to think of it, is the sought-after apex in all of art. So that when the second season is released (as inevitably it will be), I'm going back into this. Who knows, there may be humans in there after all.
