The Queen's Gambit

At this point, any hour-long drama that forsakes intellectual property, narrative histrionics and expensive special effects in favor of psychological realism represents a welcome change of pace. And one as excellent as The Queen’s Gambit feels very rare indeed. ... A transcendent performance by Anya Taylor-Joy. ... One of the year’s most fascinating TV characters.

It’s fabulous. Anya Taylor-Joy (Emma, Peaky Blinders) lights up the screen. This is a sterling example of streaming TV giving a story its due when Hollywood had long ago decided it was too big and complicated for a two-hour film.

With excellent pacing and a sure sense of itself out of the gate, The Queen’s Gambit is a work of art—riveting, radiant, and simply spellbinding. Like Beth, it triumphs through its devotion to a love of the game.

One hopes that “The Queen’s Gambit” would serve as a reminder that quality writing can always find an audience. With production values that compare with anything on television this year, a performance at the center that never falters, and the kind of rich storytelling more common to literature than television, this is one of the most consistently entertaining and impressive shows of 2020.

It absorbs the viewer into the rarefied realm of world-class competition and acquaints the nonplayer with enough of the mechanics to make the outcomes accessible and meaningful. ... If there are awards to be had, Ms. Heller and Ms. Taylor-Joy should get them. ... Ms. Taylor-Joy is really the beginning and endgame of “The Queen’s Gambit,” and gives a performance that is as precisely physical as it is emotional.

Taylor-Joy's tour de force performance — one that deserves awards recognition over the months to come — is integral to the success of The Queen's Gambit, but it's far from the seven-episode saga's only asset. Boasting a novelistic, steady momentum, The Queen's Gambit works for many of the same reasons Netflix's The Crown works: It's smart, lavishly produced television for inquisitive grownups, even when it's very much operating within a genre prone to familiar rhythms. It's something to relish.

Everything that works in writer-director Scott Frank’s highly bingeworthy adaptation of “The Queen’s Gambit,” which is most everything about it, comes from treating Walter Tevis’ 1983 novel just seriously enough. ... The results aren’t “important," or “improving.” They’re just pretty irresistible.

"Queen's" [script] is electrifying. Frank's direction is full of quick cuts, artful framing and beautiful shots. Paired with the superb score, "Queen's" gives the series' many chess matches near Olympic tension and gravitas, as exciting as any great sports film. But "Queen's" wouldn't sing without Taylor-Joy, who turns in one of the best performances of her already celebrated young career.

Anchored by a magnetic lead performance and bolstered by world-class acting, marvelous visual language, a teleplay that’s never less than gripping, and an admirable willingness to embrace contradiction and ambiguity, it’s one of the year’s best series. While not without flaws, it is, in short, a triumph.

Frank’s second limited series is another risk and another unexpected charmer. To say the actors’ steal the show is both true and a tad flippant toward the measured work from every department that makes these seven episodes sing.

No knowledge of chess is needed to enjoy this show. It’s more about one person’s evolution, a classic long journey through friendships, love and personal struggles. But it’s hard to imagine anyone other than Taylor-Joy making that journey; she imbues Beth with a cool confidence and her exotic, big-eyed look has an oddball eroticism that’s hers alone. Chess has never sizzled like this.

Taylor-Joy’s cerebral acting meshes perfectly with Beth’s story. She’s an actor of micro-expressions, of flickers of eyes and twitches of lips, and what makes The Queen Gambit such a good fit for her is the way she keeps both the viewer and Beth’s opponents at arm’s length.

It’s a smart and entertaining seven-episode ride.

It is very good — thoughtful, exciting, entertaining.

Allan Scott and Scott Frank have done a fine job of adapting the long sought-after 1983 novel and exploring the phases of Beth Harmon’s life.

The Queen’s Gambit is still largely satisfying anyway, as a handsome-looking period piece, another showcase for Taylor-Joy’s talents (and her eyes), and a consideration of anxiety, unprocessed trauma, and how both can so easily conspire to drive a genius in the opposite direction of her dreams.

It flows swiftly and elegantly, recovering from a few stumbles with grace and aplomb. Its final conclusions have a striking power.

“The Queen’s Gambit” becomes very shrewd about its choices and keeps the narrative going at an impressively fast clip — making it a sharp, welcome contrast to the all too many lethargic streaming dramas out there.

First scene to last, she makes this a character with her nose to the ground as she sniffs out weakness and vulnerabilities, in all the men she faces off with, and in herself.

The Queen’s Gambit is actually aware that its protagonist can occasionally be a jerk. For all the assured direction and exotic locales—including a jaunt to Paris—Beth’s internal journey is the most captivating element of The Queen’s Gambit. The series may border on wish fulfillment at times, but at least it casts a spell.

If Anya Taylor-Joy is on the cusp of major stardom -- with a "Mad Max" prequel in her future, and "The New Mutants" and "Emma" in her recent past -- The Queen's Gambit should advance her several moves ahead. The tale of a troubled chess prodigy, Taylor-Joy's magnetic presence is enough reason to watch this handsome Netflix limited series, even if the seven-part production gets dragged out about three episodes too long.

It's a stylish period piece with the rambling-years momentum of a John Irving novel. Luscious production design and a darkly fascinating lead performance duel against mawkish sentiment and a messy final act. It's always fun to watch, even when it's playing emotional checkers.

“Gambit” never quite gets back to the charm of its Dickensian opening chapter, though, and it gets thinner as it goes along. Frank pulls off his combination of themes with a lot of old-Hollywood-style skill, but in the mix, neither the sports nor the personal-demons story line hits the levels of visceral excitement or emotional payoff that you might want. In the end, it was an admirable package that I wanted to love more than I did.

The Queen’s Gambit functions best and for the most part as a wish-fulfilment, rags-to-riches fantasy.

As with Godless, a lot of this story’s flaws and superficiality only become obvious because of how long it lingers, while the parts that are excellent (Taylor-Joy’s performance, the technical mastery) wouldn’t be diminished in a more abridged version of the tale.

The front half of the miniseries features a fair share of compelling enough drama, in an appealingly “slow-and-low prestige simmer” that gave me Mad Men vibes. ... And yet, Taylor-Joy tends to play this character at an arms-folded, detached, deadpan/forlorn pitch. ... Perhaps the show’s reliance on the same narrative beat over and over again, its need to run the playbook with no surprise, its comfort in empty moments of non-energy for no sake proves that certain chess strategies remain better dramatized, rather than applied to a filmmaking mode itself.