The Queen’s Gambit interiors and filming locations

The chess and the clothes are impressive, but we’re hooked on the retro home decor and glamorous vintage hotel interiors

Anya Taylor-Joy as Beth Harmon in The Queen’s Gambit

Perhaps the joy of Netflix’s current stream du jour, The Queen’s Gambit, is that while it’s undoubtedly a show about chess, you don’t have to have any knowledge of or much interest in the game to enjoy it.

Considering a tournament game of chess can go for anywhere up to six hours, a drama series about a chess champion doesn’t seem like a riveting prospect. And yet, we’re all hooked.

If you are a chess player, we salute you and and your executive brain function.

For those who are not, but interested in learning: the sale of chess sets are up — searches for ‘chess sets’ rose 273 per cent on eBay in the 10 days following the show’s debut at the end of October (around one search every six seconds).

Then there’s the rest of us who don’t know our rook from your bishop but are hungry for quality viewing underscored by strong performances, and if there’s some rich visuals from German production design supremo Uli Hanisch (Cloud Atlas) and stylish vintage fashion by costume expert Gabriele Binder (The Lives of Others) to feast on, then all the better.

Starring the mesmerising Anya Taylor-Joy as Beth Harmon — an orphaned chess prodigy with an uncanny talent and a dependence on tranquillisers she became hooked on as a child — the show is based on the 1983 book of the same name by Walter Tevis.

Anya Taylor-Joy as Beth Harmon and Thomas Brodie-Sangster as Benny in The Queen’s Gambit battle it out in Las Vegas for the US Open — but the ‘Hotel Mariposa’ is in reality, the Palais am Funkturm building of the exhibition complex, Messe Berlin.

The much-lauded supporting cast includes Marielle Heller as Beth’s adoptive mother Alma, newcomer Isla Johnston as the younger Beth, Harry Potter’s Harry Melling, Star Wars’ Jacob Fortune-Lloyd and Thomas Brodie-Sangster (who has sent the internet into a tizz for being the boy from Love Actually, all grown up).

The drama — and yes, for a show about chess there is a lot — unfolds against a backdrop of fictional hotel and home interiors that display the same attention to detail we last observed in Mad Men, embracing modernism, maximalism the golden age of hotel design.

Although ostensibly set across the US mid-west and New York, with key scenes in Lexington Kentucky and New York City, and at Beth’s international tournaments in France, Mexico and — spoiler alert, the USSR — the show was shot in Berlin, Germany and Ontario Canada.

Beth’s home

As Beth’s prospects first start to improve, she finds herself in a middle-class home with her new parents (one decidedly more pleased about her being there), but the house is a cacophony of print, its quirky and claustrophobic tendencies perhaps a nod to the mental state of its occupants. With its layers upon layers of prints — on the wallpaper, curtains, bedding, upholstery, lampshades, even the stairs — it makes for an enjoyable, if not dizzying sight.

Alma and Beth get acquainted. PICTURE: Courtesy of Netflix

Later in the show, Beth takes the house on as her own, and undertakes a renovation takes the interiors firmly into the 1960s, embracing subverted colours and prints.

Beth in her new bedroom. PICTURE: Courtesy of Netflix

Beth’s renovated home. PICTURE: Courtesy of Netflix

Las Vegas

Then there’s the hotels. While the rooms are largely sets, some of the lobbies and common areas are set in buildings around Berlin. When Beth travels to Las Vegas for the US Open, the “Hotel Mariposa” is in reality, the Palais am Funkturm building of the exhibition complex, Messe Berlin.

The real “Hotel Mariposa” is the Messe Berlin exhibition centre in Berlin.

The Messe Berlin

Mexico City

As Beth’s standing increases, she and Alma start to stay in more decadent hotels — a strong visual reminder that Beth’s stocks are rising.

The exterior of a Mexico City “hotel” is a mix of CGI and Berlin’s Friedrichstadt-Palast theatre, complete with its intricate stained-glass windows.

Marielle Heller plays Alma in The Queen’s Gambit. PICTURE: Phil Bray/Netflix

Beth and Alma in their Mexico City digs. PICTURE: Courtesy of Netflix

The coloured stained-glass windows of Berlin’s Friedrichstadt-Palast theatre.

Paris and Moscow

Without giving too much away, after the opening shots set in 1967 Paris in the first episode Beth’s journey does eventually come full circle. The opening scenes were filmed at Haus Cumberland (Cumberland House), a hotel-turned-commercial and residential building in Charlottenburg in Berlin. Many of the other interiors from Beth’s time in Paris were filmed at Berlin’s Bode Museum.

PICTURE: Courtesy of Netflix

Some of the most striking visual scenes in the show culminate in Moscow where, far from the cold war cliche of Soviet deprivation Beth enjoys comparative luxury and caviar for breakfast. Scenes in her hotel’s ‘restaurant’ were filmed at the ‘60s-era Kino International cinema in Berlin.

Beth’s ‘Moscow hotel’.

Real life: The Kino International Cinema in Berlin.