Dead Ringers: All eeries vibes and graphic scenes, and little substance

Consider this your personal warning that Amazon’s new TV drama will not hold back on the blood and viscera.

Rachel Weisz’s performances are better than the show itself. Picture: Amazon Prime Video

If Dead Ringers were only a showcase for Rachel Weisz’s acting nous, then it would be a resounding success.

The English Oscar winner pulls double duty and plays identical twins in this moody streaming series remake of a David Cronenberg film, itself loosely based on the strange story of a pair of real-life brothers.

And she’s clearly having an absolutely delightful time doing it. She gets to play the conniving, loose and wicked Elliot and the sad, responsible Beverly – and the conflict and co-dependency that marks such a relationship.

It’s always difficult to create chemistry with yourself – not that the opportunity comes up very often – and Weisz pulls it off. It’s a game of seduction and power play with oneself.

Of course, with any story with twins, the tension is not really in the differences between genetic doubles but the ways in which they’re actually more alike than they thought – the responsible twin makes terrible and impulsive choices when pushed, and the “bad” twin has redemptive qualities.

Twins aren’t really binary. If anything, they represent between them the multitudes we each contain within ourselves. So, while it’s easy to peg one as the good twin, nothing is ever that clear cut. That whole “two sides of the same coin” aphorism is really like a melted molten blob.

Who doesn’t love a story about twins? Picture: Amazon Prime Video

The story is centred on the Mantle twins, both gynaecologists/obstetricians in New York City, deliverers of joy and sadness. The miracle of birth can also be the tragedy of desire for something you can’t have.

Elliot is seemingly the steely, curious one, more interested in lab work and pushing past the ethical boundaries of science in creating life. Beverly is seemingly the more compassionate one, who delivers the babies on the wards, wanting to create a safe space for all women, regardless of income or status.

That doesn’t mean Dead Ringers is a safe space for audiences because it features very graphic scenes of birthing – and that is scenes, plural. There’s no warning that little heads are going to pop out of vaginas or cut out of stomachs, all covered in blood and viscera, so consider this your word of caution.

There’s something honest about not turning an eye from the messy business of childbirth, but, still, it’s “ye gods” enough to make your stomach drop. The boldness of that choice, and early on in its first episode, hints at its thematic ambitions.

Not exactly an Anne Geddes photo. Picture: Amazon Prime Video

Elliot and Beverly pitch a billionaire businesswoman, Rebecca Parker (Jennifer Ehle), to invest in their vision for a birthing and fertility centre. The centre is all brutalist lines and splashes of red, an intimidating space that hints at whatever scientific menace Elliot might be concocting away from legal oversight.

Meanwhile, Beverly is contending with the irony of delivering other women’s babies while unable to carry one to term herself.

The key to Dead Ringers is that thorny relationship between Elliot and Beverly, and the shifting power dynamics between them. Elliot is the dominant one, and will take charge for Beverly in ways that are definitely unethical – the twin swap is a frequent thing – but there’s a strength and defiance to Beverly that puts Elliot off-kilter.

The original inspiration for Cronenberg’s film, which starred Jeremy Irons in the dual roles, were Stewart and Cyril Marcus, twin OBGYNs who were found dead together at the age of 45 in their NYC apartment.

The peculiar demise of the Marcuses fuels the psychological aspect of the series, as if there’s a fatalism to it. That unease permeates the show, but there’s a weightlessness to it. While stylish and vibey, Dead Ringers doesn’t penetrate.

Dead Ringers is all vibe and little substance. Picture: Amazon Prime Video

The series was adapted by Alice Birch, who co-wrote the TV versions of Sally Rooney’s Normal People and Conversations with Friends as well as films Lady Macbeth and Mothering Sunday, with Martha Marcy May Marlene filmmaker Sean Durkin as the set-up director.

Birch and Durkin have both done great work in the past, and with Weisz’s talents, Dead Ringers should be a slam-dunk.

But it’s not. As enthralling as Weisz’s performances are, there’s a connective tissue missing in the show. It’s jumping from scene to scene, story point to story point with the veneer of forward momentum but there’s something both stagnant and restless about it. And the peripheral characters beyond the twins are not developed.

There was a lot of potential here to really explore the ethics of science and fertility, especially through the duality of twins, already a natural anomaly, but it’s barely even secondary.

So, more often than not, Dead Ringers is just an eerie vibe without the substance to ground it.

Dead Ringers is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video