‘Ripley’ Netflix series review: Andrew Scott consummately nails 50 shades of grey 

Steven Zaillian's black-and-white ‘Ripley,’ a thrilling tale of jealousy and deception, features a mesmerizing performance by Andrew Scott

Steven Zaillian’s Ripley is entirely shot in black and white – well not completely, there is one little, teeny, tiny splash of red. This black-and-white palette proves to be an effective distinction from Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film, The Talented Mr. Ripley. Based on Patricia Highsmith’s eponymous 1955 novel about a conman Ripley (Matt Damon), the film was gorgeous and golden.

Featuring stars such as Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, the film was a glorious showreel of the swish set in the late 1950s. Those bronze bodies in leisure wear, the excursions on yachts, the art and writing all pointed to the dream life.

Zaillian, who has also written and directed Ripley, said in an interview that the edition of the book he had featured a black-and-white cover (mine has photographs in black-and-white and colour) and he felt it fit the story. While Minghella’s version seemed to suggest there is evil under the sun, a maggot in the reddest of apples (which naturalists will tell you is a good thing), Zaillian chooses the black-and-white route to presage the horrors to come.

In fact, the first sequence in Ripley shows a man dragging a body down the stairs. We are then taken to New York in the 1960s where Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott) living in a grimy apartment, is perpetuating petty cons. When a detective comes looking for him, he first thinks the law has finally caught up with him. The detective, however, was tasked with finding him by a wealthy shipping magnate, Herbert Greenleaf (Kenneth Lonergan).

Greenleaf’s son, Dickie, (Johnny Flynn) is squandering his trust fund traveling in Europe with aspirations to be a writer/artist. Greenleaf, believing Tom knows Dickie, wants him to try and persuade Dickie to return home. Greenleaf promises to take care of Tom’s expenses. Tom looks at the opportunity as heaven sent and sets off to Atrani, on the Amalfi Coast.

Tom meets Dickie (who does not remember him) and his girlfriend Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning) who is a writer, and gets a taste of the high life. Like the tiger of legend who gets a taste of human blood, Tom is unwilling to let this golden goose slip out of his hand. He will go to any lengths to keep the pen (that everyone comments is beautiful), the Rolex, the Ferragamo shoes and the Picasso, even if it means murder.

Ripley is full of foreshadowing; the many steps Tom has to climb in Atrani, and later in Rome where the elevator (a veritable thing of beauty) is often not working, is emblematic of Tom’s social climbing. There is also Tom’s shadow falling across Dickie when he first meets him on the beach.