Ripley: A Hard Man To Find Show Only

April 7, 2024 9:16 AM - Season 1, Episode 1

A grifter named Ripley (Andrew Scott) living in 1960s New York is hired by a wealthy man to visit Italy and convince his son to come home. (8-episode mini-series, Netflix, 2024)

Reviews:
NPR: Netflix's stylish 'Ripley' stretches the grift — and the tension — to the max
Art Daily: The con man gets the art house treatment (in lieu of the same NYT paywalled article)
Vulture: The Remorseless Mr. Ripley: Andrew Scott’s phenomenal take on Patricia Highsmith’s con man anchors a deliciously mean adaptation.

posted by sylvanshine (5 comments total)

The look of this show is absolutely impeccable – it's tailor made for the biggest, sharpest screen you have. It's amazing to think the kind of cinematography they've done here would've been deeply inadvisable just a decade or two ago when people had smaller TVs.
posted by adrianhon at 12:55 PM on April 7 [4 favorites]

I have no idea what this is about, but it is indeed gorgeous, and has me hooked.
posted by 2N2222 at 7:32 PM on April 7

Absolutely fascinating and enthralling. adrianhon is exactly right about the look. I'm not sure if it is an artifact of the black & white cinematography or some other technique/effect, but I feel like I am watching real people, not actors. It's almost disconcerting at times (Ripley's first meeting with Mr. Greenleaf in particular), but in a way that delightfully enhances the tension in every line.

Su! Su! Su!
posted by Rock Steady at 7:54 AM on April 8

I love that the show decides the Italian we here in this episode needs no translation. Like Ripley, we will work out the code pretty quickly. So "Su! Su! Su!" indeed then "Giù!, Giù!, Giù!"

Atrani: beautiful, vertiginous yet rather bleak, isolated and empty looking despite the sun - is like a character in its own right.
posted by rongorongo at 10:37 PM on April 15

For some reason the visual of the bus ride to Atrani reminds me a lot of this meme.

it's tailor made for the biggest, sharpest screen you have. It's amazing to think the kind of cinematography they've done here would've been deeply inadvisable just a decade or two ago when people had smaller TVs.

As someone with a TV from a decade or two ago (a 42" LED from 2008, to be precise, but it still works great so we aren't replacing it until it dies), this observation made me wonder what we're missing, but I don't think it's much. It still looks beautiful.
posted by urbanlenny at 8:56 AM on May 16