Enjoyed the series and thought Anya Taylor-Joy was great. As a result (never having been aware of her before), recently watched Thoroughbreds (not so good) and The Miniaturist (much better but not as good as Queen's Gambit).
Two episodes in, and it feels like the pacing is a little slow - I do wonder if the series has been needlessly spun out to eight episodes. The chess opponents also seem a bit too 'heart on their sleeve' for my tastes - I appreciate this is for dramatic effect, but in reality I would expect them to be a lot more 'poker-faced'. Still, there's been enough to enjoy in it that I'll keep watching for now.
Hey man, it was the 60's. They didn't have the 'cut and edit' short term attention spans we have these days.
I thought they could have dispensed with the entire first episode wasted on the Victorian orphanage plot and just gotten straight to her kicking ass at chess. But I guess, by the rules of TV fiction, you have to give her some obstacle or addiction to overcome besides overcoming her opponents at the chessboard. She can’t just be great at chess, although that would be a truly revolutionary feminist plot, no, she has to have some monkey on her back she has to beat, too.
Bobby Fischer had his demons as well. Not everybody that is a grandmaster at chess is well put together and have all their ducks in a row. That said, I do think the orphanage deal ran on a bit too long, but it did serve a purpose to propel the story.
I was dragged kicking and screaming to watch this and, very surprisingly, considering how much I hate chess, absolutely loved it. Diane and I binge watched it. No slow bits and absolutely electrifying acting.
Just finished watching this. I was thinking to myself, "wow David Spade is really looking youthful these days" when the Benny character showed up. Later on, my wife corrected me: "that's the little kid from Love Actually!" Mind blown. Good series.
As with people insisting that Pixar’s Soul is “about” jazz, it’s not, this mini-series isn’t really “about” chess. Beth could have any special talent or skill and the story would be the same. It’s about Beth, not about the game or sport she plays.
Agreed. I wound up watching the mini-series and thought it was great. The chess matches were suspenseful, even while I had no idea what was going on in them.
The chess isn't really that detailed in the show. You see pieces moved, but the objectives and strategies are somewhat unknown. Only with the boards showing the pieces or the guy talking about strategy do you really get an idea of what's going on (outside of few obvious opening moves).
And I think that’s a good thing. Vast majority of viewers are there to be entertained, not to be immersed in the minutiae of chess strategy.
Totally agree. The show is about a young girl becoming a grandmaster or savant (if you will) of the game. The game itself is somewhat of a vehicle for the story to be told. It certainly works.
Some minutiae would have been welcome. The audience isn't completely dumb. God knows I have to sit through an awful lot of jargon in American football and baseball movies.
In moderation it might have satisfied the chess crowd a bit more without turning off the people who just wanted to be entertained, but I’m not sure it would have resulted in higher viewership to have that. I think if there’s no distinct payoff for the series makers, there’s little incentive to do it because you have to research what you put in there and then the chess savvy may still disagree about what was said or dissect it and say how naive or wrong some detail was. . .all for no real payoff.
There's always a ton of incentive to make it as real and plausible as possible. Do you want to see Mad Men without any discussion of advertising strategies? Or Breaking Bad without the chemistry? They already had Kasparov (and others) on board as a consultant, so the additional research is negligible. A few words of wisdom about castling, or queen exchange, or such-and-such a pawn formation might have been nice. People have been dissecting and arguing about the game for thousands of years. If the show stimulates the debate, that's great.
In fairness, there is some talk of that in the show. I recall Benny and Elizabeth talking some strategy as well as her and the guy that lived with her (I can’t remember his name). And, as I mentioned, the Mexican commentator talks about moves & strategy at the tournament in Mexico City. I think there was enough talk about the game that it didn’t come across as false. I mean, I’m a decent player and I thought the game itself was handled with some care to detail. That’s all that was really needed.
I'm sure you're right. I can't remember. There aren't many chess shows on TV, but plenty about f'd-up broads, so it's nice if they go the extra mile to make it special. I detected a pathological fear of chess in some posts.
Just finished it, loved every second. The director clearly enjoyed the chance to do a Scorsese shot, Hitchcock shot, Paul Thomas Anderson shot etc, but I didnt mind that. Everything in it looked perfect, as a Sixties fetishist, it ticked all the boxes.
Even though the show doesn’t beat you over the head with it, most or all of the major games Beth plays in the show are drawn from famous games in chess history, and they have all been analyzed online. I stand by the belief that the show is better for not having a running play-by-play commentary of “Oh my, Harmon castles kingside!”. The show isn’t “about” chess per se, it’s about Beth being a prodigy at something. She could be a prodigy at bridge, fencing, or painting, and the basic story would be the same.
Agree entirely, hence why I said chess was the vehicle for the basis of the story about a young woman trying to figure out her place in the world.
