With less than 2 months left in 2020, if you ask me what Netflix TV series is worth watching, I would definitely recommend this one - The Queen’s Gambit.
It’s a 7-episode annual Netflix show that premiered on October 23rd and has an iMdb rating of 8.9 as of November 6th. How can a show achieve such a stellar performance?
We begin with the novel of the same name.In 1983, at the age of 55, Walter Tevis published the novel The Queen’s Gambit, featuring Beth Harmon, a talented chess girl and a woman who suffers from tranquilizers and alcohol.Beth is sent to an orphanage after the death of her mother at age 8, where she meets The chess that changed her life. Like his protagonist, Walter Tevis is a chess enthusiast, alcoholic and socially awkward, and while not a literary juggernaut, Tevis is an excellent storyteller, with four of his six novels having been adapted into films: The Hustler, The Color of Money, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and The Queen’s Gambit.
In March 2019, Netflix booked the TV series version of Rear Wing Abandonment, which premieres on October 23, 2020, with the female lead played by Anya Taylor-Joy. Fair, red-haired and bright-eyed, it has to be said that Anya’s portrayal of the lead character is too vivid when these features are concentrated on a cold, stern face.
One other element of this show, besides drug and alcohol abuse, has to be mentioned is the portrayal of women’s rights.
In the 1960s, even in the U.S., female chess players were still a highly sought-after status, when many women were housewives, cooking at home, cleaning up the house, with no income and waiting for their husbands to provide a little living.
The adoptive mother in the play, who later adopts Beth, is also a depressed housewife who loves the piano and talks beautifully about it, and when she marries, her husband not only finds her noisy, but even her piano is just a tool to gag her in his eyes.
Another woman in the show, Beth’s high school classmate, a girl Beth just transferred to high school to despise Beth’s dress, marries a fellow classmate soon after graduation, soon has a child, and runs into Beth on a shopping trip to the mall. Beth, at the time, made more money than many men, could independently buy the house her adoptive father had mortgaged, and was free to choose her own clothes and go to her favorite restaurants. The look in her classmates’ eyes when they saw Beth was complicated with admiration and sadness for the passing of time.
When the newspapers and magazines report on Beth’s accomplishments, they make no mention of the orphanage staff who nurtured Beth, but rather constantly emphasize her status as a woman. Because she was a woman, she received extra attention. This was upsetting to Beth, but also frustrating. On the interview after she won the world title, Beth mentioned the orphanage employee who enlightened her again. Only this time, she made a point of writing about the employee she mentioned to the reporters.
There were several times when I was worried that the chess terminology in this play would turn off many viewers. But as it turns out, I was wrong.
The Queen’s Gambit is a brilliant and unconventional drama that has helped Netflix gain a wave of audience goodwill for the tail end of 2020.
If you happen to be in a drama drought, go watch it, the show will not disappoint you.