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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Barbara Ellen

The week in television: Ripley; This Town; The Assembly; Mammals – review

Tom Ripley Assembly The Assembly Andrew Scott Michael Sheen Patricia Highsmith BBC One David Attenborough Netflix
Andrew Scott drinking in a bar as Tom Ripley in the new Netflix series.
‘Understated but chilling’: Andrew Scott as Tom Ripley in the new Netflix series. Photograph: Courtesy of Netflix/AP

Ripley Netflix
This Town (BBC One) | iPlayer
The Assembly (BBC One) | iPlayer
Mammals (BBC One) | iPlayer

I felt nervous about the new eight-part adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 psychological thriller, The Talented Mr Ripley. Would Netflix stuff it up? We’re all hardened to botched streamer adaptations, but this is Tom Ripley, the reptilian anti-hero grifter of Highsmith’s five (“Ripliad”) novels. Would they soften Tom up, make him (I can hardly bear to type these words) “more likable”? Of previous adaptations, I loved Anthony Minghella’s glossy, shattering 1999 film starring Matt Damon (even if liberties were taken with the text). Anyway, I needn’t have fretted. Ripley is intelligent, mercurial, beautiful and devastating. It’s what it needed to be: a work of art about a nasty piece of work.

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