This is a brief apology for not caring all that much about seeing Scott Frank and Allan Scott‘s The Queen’s Gambit, a seven-episode Netflix miniseries that began almost two weeks ago (on Friday, 10.23).
I was initially intrigued when I realized it was an adaptation of a 1983 novel by Walter Tevis, author of three novels that became noteworthy films — The Hustler, The Color of Money and The Man Who Fell To Earth. But somehow the idea of a period saga about a young chess wizard (Ana Taylor Joy) who stands up to entrenched sexism but succumbs to drug and alcohol dependency when she enters her late teens or whenever…somehow it just didn’t flip the light switch.
It nonetheless has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating and is no doubt worth the effort. I’ve admired and respected Frank’s work for many years. I’ll drop in soon.
