A series about chess.
Sounds bland?
Not if it is staged like "The Queen's Gambit", which can now be seen on Netflix.
A captivating production in every way.
Perfect for dark winter days.
Filming began in Cambridge, Ontario in August 2019.
The film was also shot in and around Berlin
The title “Queen's Gambit” alludes to a frequently played chess opening
The series is based on the novel "The Queen's Gambit" by Walter Tevis from 1983
If a series manages to get you to dig out the yellowed edition of Rudolf Teschner's “A School of Chess in 40 Hours”, with which your own father tried to create the king's game in the seventies, then that's reason enough to recommend this series.
Educational mission fulfilled.
But - how could it be otherwise with the darn clever Netflix people with their sense of taking on all the great talent - that's not all.
There are a few other really good reasons in
"The Queen's Gambit"
take a look.
(Whereby "looking in", of course, as with all good series, is just a euphemism for itself all night long, because you just can't help but keep looking. Until there is nothing left to look in. Because night and season have gone through.)
The opening: the casting.
Whoever discovered Isla Johnston, a 13-year-old British girl, made a good move.
The talented girl with the big eyes plays with haunted gaze the withdrawn, traumatized by her mother's suicide, Beth Harmon, who grew up in an orphanage in Kentucky in her fifties.
As in the novel by Walter Tevis, Beth discovers not only the escapist effect of sedatives in the desolate educational institution, but also a world that is completely new to her: 64 black and white fields.
The gnarled caretaker (Bill Camp) of the home recognizes the talent of the clever child.
The career of a thinker begins.
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The caretaker (Bill Camp) teaches the young Beth (Isla Johnston) the king's game.
© Netflix
The fact that at the end of each episode we feel like we're in a hanging game that should be continued immediately is not due to particularly hard-cut cliffhangers.
Director and author Scott Frank prefers to rely on the natural fascination of his leading actress.
After Isla Johnston it is played by the doe-eyed Anya Taylor-Joy.
Her looks, which the excellent camera (Steven Meizler) brings into focus, seem impenetrable for Beth's opponent.
But as a viewer you immediately notice when things go wrong (whether in life or on the board) for the apparently invincible.
In the midst of the first-class furnishings, which bring the smell of the fifties and the stuffy chic of the sixties to life, a young woman tries to find her way here.
Ironically, in the male-dominated chess world.
The feminism club doesn't have to be swung, this lady exemplifies what every talented young person should allow himself: to be convinced of his abilities.
Whether male or female does not matter.
But let's be honest, it's all the cooler that Beth is a woman.
His own father, as a bookmark reveals after reading 30 pages in Teschner's chess book, seems to have only made it to the seventh hour at that time.
No reason for the daughter to give up.