From Sherlock ’s mad Moriarty to Fleabag ’s “hot priest” , Andrew Scott has long ruled supreme as one of modern television’s great scene-stealers. He has gone on to have success on the big screen – and was regarded as unfortunate not to receive an Oscar nomination for his stunning lead role in this year’s haunting All of Us Strangers . But now he’s back on TV for Ripley , a stark and arty retelling of Patricia Highsmith’s psychological thriller The Talented Mr Ripley – previously tackled by Anthony Minghella in 1999 with
Matt Damon in the title role of the silver-tongued psychopath. At 47, Scott has a few years on the twenty-something Tom Ripley. His read on the character in this bleakly dazzling and absorbingly meditative adaptation is, not surprisingly then, considerably more world-weary. Scott’s Ripley is a burnt-out scam-artist tired of eking a dishonest living in
New York who leaps at the opportunity to travel to Italy’s Amalfi Coast to track down the
Playboy son of a wealthy industrialist. Ripley is filmed in black and white, which, in the context of the Italian backdrop, gives it the vintage gloss of a Fellini film . It also takes its time getting going. Much of the first episode is devoted to painting a depressing portrait of Ripley as a Manhattan huckster whose various scams are finally starting to catch up with him. That relaxed pace gives Scott the space to bring Ripley to life as a scoundrel whose driving quality is not charm but a terrifying ruthlessness. Scott’s performance is twitchy and anxious. The only exception is the empty place behind his eyes, which transmits a stark stillness. His gaze is blank and cold: a soulless void devoid of empathy. Sent to
Italy on the dime of the mega-bucks Herbert Greenleaf, he inveigles his way into the confidence of the magnate’s dilettante son Dickie ( Johnny Flynn ), to the disapproval of Dickie’s instantly suspicious girlfriend Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning). In the 1999 version, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow were achingly glamorous as Marge and Dickie. By contrast, in this shadowy, understated tilt at Highsmith, Flynn reimagines Dickie as a well-meaning buffoon. He is wealthy yes, but more Bertie Wooster working on his tan than Law’s dashing eurotrash. Read Next Aldi's Next Big Thing is an hour-long advert for crab cakes Ripley is one of the great enigmas of 20th-century fiction. Scott captures the ambivalence of a man who seems a stranger even to himself. “The reason he’s such an interesting character is you can’t quite place him. If Tom Ripley was in a gay bar, I’m not sure that he would fit in there,” the
Actor told Interview magazine in 2021. “Nor do I think he’s a straight character. I think he’s a queer character, in the sense that he’s very Other.” The actor has a worthy foil in Flynn, a sometime folk musician who has had an up-and-down acting career. He was atrociously miscast as David Bowie in the unauthorised rock biopic Stardust , yet excelled opposite Carey Mulligan in the Sutton Hoo period drama The Dig . Here he pulls off a perfect
American accent – as does Scott, who imbues his relationship with Dickie with a homoerotic charge. There are also smaller parts for Eliot Sumner (son of Sting) and John Malkovich , who played Tom Ripley in 2002’s Ripley’s Game . Highsmith’s novel was a thriller where the reader always sensed something awful coming down the tracks. That air of dread is wonderfully conjured by Ripley writer Steven Zaillian, a
Hollywood veteran whose credits include Schindler’s List and HBO’s The Night Of. He has provided the perfect platform for Scott to bring the thrills and chills. Forget Hot Priest – ice-cool Ripley is the man in black (and white) he was born to play. Streaming on Netflix