I’ve been watching it all week and really enjoying it. I did wonder at the tournament parts, if the actors were making real moves, and if so, how difficult it would be do that unless you knew chess very well. And if they are not real moves, then how distracting it must be for chess players to watch.
The actress playing Beth has such an interesting and expressive face. I love watching her. Oh and the sets are amazing - the wallpaper in Beth’s house when she was young, I knew places like that!
they are real moves and real openings. I think they get chess right, mostly.
There was this scene where her opponent surprised her in the opening. In a real chess game, that’s where you stop and start to invest some time, like at least 5-10 minutes. But in the scene you see her surprised for a few moments, and insecure, and then moving pieces again.
I binged Queen’s Gambit while taking a few days off from work. It’s a really good production and a lot of fun, especially since I already watch chess videos on YouTube for fun (I barely play and am terrible at the game).
While I would recommend the series to anyone looking for an entertaining watch, I don’t think it’s award-caliber for the most part. The script can be heavy-handed at times, occasionally leaning too hard into tortured-genius tropes. And the child actor portraying young Beth is not great.
The high points for me were
The performance of Anya Tay-Joy. She owns the role completely and carries the series with ease.
The gorgeous period production design. The sets just floored me.
The chess. I know enough about it to know that the games on the show looked real.
Here’s a popular YouTuber breaking down the show’s climactic game, in the same way he does for actual games played at high-level tournaments:
I’m enjoying it. The chess looks solid if obviously extremely sped-up for consumption. They don’t come within a country mile of getting a Kentucky accent right, but that’s no biggie.
I was surprised to see so many British actors playing American: Anya Taylor-Joy, Dudley Dursley, the kid from Love Actually, the ruggedly handsome one…
She’s an interesting case. She’s British, but wasn’t born there and English isn’t her first language (she’s a native Spanish speaker), so her accent is very slippery. You can hear it slide from British to American depending on who she’s interviewing with.
Ok, yeah. I didn’t love the first episode (even if it subverted expectations a bit), but continued watching due to the discussion above. And the second episode was just riveting. Will definitely watch the rest.
I watched the whole thing this past week. I don’t know chess, but it just felt right and smart…glad to know it was more right than wrong. And I thought it was going to go somewhere other than where it did.
finished it. Was a better display of chess in tv than ever. I read that KAsparov and PAndolfini contributed as consultants.
However, they played way to fast. Even in games with long time controls, they played like blitz or bullet. Didn’t matter opening, middlegame or endgame. They shoot out their moves. Usually, chess involves heavy thinking ;) That takes time, therefore the clock.
Yeah, on some scenes I figured that wasn’t realistic.
But in many others I figured that the pauses were edited/skipped, and I imagined that they happened. This is TV after all, two folks staring at a board for 20 minutes is why most folks don’t watch chess IRL.
There were even a couple of overnight breaks during matches in the series (which I understand aren’t allowed anymore). So I filled in hours of no action in my head.
of course, called adjournments. Good times! You had your seconds analyzing all night while you were asleep. The other morning you go through the variants.
In one of the Karpov - Korchnoi match, there was a point where they started a new game while they still had an adjourned game leftover…
this is a great documentary, almost a thriller I can highly recommend.
lol, Korchnoi was one of the greatest players of his time. He was in his 40s (!) when he played the candidates against Karpov. This was before Karpov got the title because Bobby Fischer didn’t show up.
If Korchnoi had won the candidates match, he would have become world champion. He fighted Karpov the next 10 years, until Kasparov showed up.
Every time I heard her talk I heard Buffy the Vampire Slayer (SMG) talking :)
That said, I though this was great. It was interesting to see her go from a total one note chess nerd to a more worldly confident woman of the world chess superstar. My only complaint is her overcoming her addictions seemed almost overnight and far too easy.
Yeah, the show seemed to have set up a link between the addiction and playing chess at the highest level. The obvious conclusion was that she’d have to choose, and the tension in the last episodes was that as a viewer I really didn’t know which way I even wanted the choice to go. Having it get resolved with both having and eating the cake was a bit of a letdown.
But anyway, great show. I’ll definitely be recommending this a bunch.
I binged this in less than 2 days, so obviously loved it, but must say I did have 2 problems with it that still bother me. As others have mentioned, I thought the addiction was poorly handled to the point of immersion-breaking unbelievability. But, I was also extremely disappointed by the complete lack of any resolution with the “friend” who got her drunk the night before her big match. I expected at the very least a confrontation (“Why did you do that to me?”), but also thought it could have been a malicious act on the part of the friend, either a simple act of jealousy for her relationship with an ex, or even more intriguing, that she was paid to distract Harmon by her opponent’s team. I kept waiting, but nothing happened.
Blaming French model is a weird take, but not the first time I’ve heard it.
People who drink like to drink. They only need a drink to be close by. If a friend is drinking, they will drink more because that’s an excuse to drink more. She is an alchie, that’s the way it works.
If Jolene had done it, Jolene could take blame because she should know better. This French girl doesn’t know MC and doesn’t deserve any blame.
