The Queen’s Gambit: Sumptuous miniseries starring Anya Taylor-Joy

When Heath Ledger died, he was prepping for a film adaptation of an acclaimed book. Twelve years later, it’s been adapted into a miniseries.

Visually impressive with a stellar anchor performance from Anya Taylor-Joy, Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit is a sumptuous miniseries set in the high-stakes world of chess and drug addiction.

Yes, the chess part had us worried too but there’s not much time spent on the fundamentals of the game that isn’t reflective of the characters’ emotional and mental states – namely, the order and control found within the 64 black-and-white squares.

It’s like that mahjong game in Crazy Rich Asians, you don’t need to understand the tiles to understand the significance.

A chess prodigy reveals herself.

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Adapted from Walter Tevis’ 1983 book of the same name, The Queen’s Gambit has had a somewhat tortured path to screen after the author’s death the year after release. High profile filmmakers came calling before it eventually passed into Heath Ledger’s hands.

A film adaptation was to be Ledger’s directorial debut and he was prepping for it – with Ellen Page mooted for the lead – when the Australian actor died from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs.

The fictional lead character of The Queen’s Gambit, chess prodigy Beth Harmon (Taylor-Joy) shares a characteristic with Ledger’s tragic end in that her mastery of the game is intimately linked to drugs and alcohol.

As teased in the trailer for the series, a journalist asks the intense and serious Beth whether there’s a connection between genius and madness.

The Queen’s Gambit plays out over seven episodes.

The seven-part miniseries starts in the 1950s, when an orphaned Beth is delivered to a girls’ institution after her mother’s death in a car crash that didn’t even leave a scratch on the youngster.

At the orphanage, she sees the custodian Mr Shaibel (Bill Camp) playing a game in the basement. He teaches her chess and recognises in Beth a prodigious skill for the game. Her simple countenance and unimposing manner did nothing to suggest the whirring mind behind those sad eyes.

She also befriends another orphan, Jolene (Moses Ingram), who tells her about the daily “vitamin” regimen – the orange pill to make you strong, the green one to even you out.

Beth starts to hoard the tranquilliser green pills, popping them at night which allows her to visualise (or maybe hallucinate) a giant chess board on the ceiling of the room she shares with a dozen other girls.

When she is adopted out to Alma (Marielle Heller), she begins to enter tournaments which come attached with large pots of prize money – the winnings and notoriety sustains Beth and Alma.

For Beth, chess and the “tranquillity” pills are connected, and it also hints at the trauma in her childhood past with her erratic mother. So, she drinks and pops pills, both of which are easier to attain as she rises in the world of professional chess and develops a formidable reputation – especially, as she’s constantly reminded, for a girl.

She has one goal – to be a grand master, but to do that, she has to beat the Russian.

She meets her match in Benny Watts (Thomas Brodie-Sangster), initially an opponent but someone with whom she would have a more complicated relationship. It’s also the first time Beth has really met someone she couldn’t outwit immediately.

Anya Taylor-Joy and Thomas Brodie-Sangster in The Queen’s Gambit

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Ambition and intensity don’t mix well with drug abuse and repressed memories and it’s a spiral that’s well-placed in Taylor-Joy’s talented hands. One of the more interesting actors of her generation, Taylor-Joy’s riveting performance explores the ups and downs of a complex character.

And because Beth is an interior character who rarely expresses what she’s feeling, much of what Taylor-Joy is doing is through her eyes – a small flicker is all it takes to speak volumes.

Developed by Scott Frank and Allan Scott, with Frank directing, The Queen’s Gambit is an alluring, compelling series. It’s a fascinating exploration of genius and compulsion and when the writing sometimes falters, Taylor-Joy is there to pick it up.

The world of The Queen’s Gambit is filled with sad people but somehow it’s never too grim – perhaps that’s due to the colourful, expensive production design, or perhaps because it’s just because it’s a vivid story that hooks into you.

The Queen’s Gambit starts streaming on Netflix on Friday, October 23 at 6pm AEDT.

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