Netflix’s Ripley has a tremendous amount to offer. It’s dark and stylish. It’s one of the most beautiful things on television. It has an exceptional cat in it. However, there is one moment in Ripley that is so preposterous it threatens to undermine the entire series. If you haven’t seen Ripley, stop reading now. If you have, you already know exactly what I’m about to say.
It’s the bloody wig, isn’t it? For most of the series, Andrew Scott’s Ripley is the charming and dapper conman he’s always been; an indisputable master of impersonation and misdirection. But in the final episode that all falls apart. As the net around him closes in, Ripley decides to confront the inspector on his case. But he does this in – and unfortunately there’s no way of using this word without inverted commas – “disguise”, because he already met him once before under an alias. So we see Ripley enter a wig shop, to choose the best possible way for him to camouflage himself entirely. We see the tools of his work at home, scissors and combs and spirit gum, to reassure us that Tom Ripley is a master of disguise with a level of unparalleled expertise. And then …
