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Anya Taylor-Joy is brilliant as chess prodigy Beth Harmon in Netflix’s limited series, The Queen’s Gambit. (Photo: Netflix)
Anya Taylor-Joy is brilliant as chess prodigy Beth Harmon in Netflix’s limited series, The Queen’s Gambit. (Photo: Netflix)

Pop CultureNovember 18, 2020

Review: The Queen’s Gambit is popcorn fun wrapped up in prestige regalia

Anya Taylor-Joy is brilliant as chess prodigy Beth Harmon in Netflix’s limited series, The Queen’s Gambit. (Photo: Netflix)
Anya Taylor-Joy is brilliant as chess prodigy Beth Harmon in Netflix’s limited series, The Queen’s Gambit. (Photo: Netflix)

It seems everybody is watching The Queen’s Gambit. What is it about the Netflix series that is so damned compelling?

Let’s be real for a moment: for most of us, unless you’re the one playing it, chess is incredibly boring. It is about as aurally and visually stimulating as watching beige paint dry on a white wall. Despite this, the game has been the focal point of a truly bizarre amount of media, including a truly bonkers musical, an award-winning novel, and now a limited Netflix series based on that novel. Even more incredibly, that Netflix series isn’t just interesting, it’s really, really good.

Considering who is involved with The Queen’s Gambit, maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise. Scott Frank, the series’ co-creator alongside journeyman screenwriter Alan Scott, has made a career out of subverting audiences’ expectations. Frank’s first major success was Out of Sight, a jazzy Elmore Leonard adaptation that delivered us career best performances from both Jennifer Lopez and George Clooney, and more recently he’s written Logan, a mournful twist on superhero films, and Godless (also on Netflix), a feminist revision of the masculinity-dominated Western genre. The one consistent thing through all of these projects? They’re highly watchable beasts, with vivid characters, beautiful aesthetics, and cutting-edge style.

And now, The Queen’s Gambit. Given the show’s popularity with audiences over the past month (it’s remained near the top of Netflix’s chaotic top ten), in spite of its subject matter, it shouldn’t be surprising that The Queen’s Gambit is a resounding creative success, if not an unqualified triumph. The show, lead by rising star Anya Taylor-Joy, a British-American actor with the biggest eyes this side of Emma Stone, is the story of Beth Harmon who becomes a chess prodigy after being taught the game by a janitor at the orphanage where she lives. While she beats her competitors with almost comical ease, her road to chess success is a sometimes rocky one, plagued as it is with addiction issues and, you know, being a woman in misogynist mid-century America.

Thomas Brodie-Sangster as Benny and Anya Taylor-Joy as Beth in The Queen’s Gambit. (Photo: Netflix)

The show’s triumphs come not from its plot, but from the fact that it’s so immediately gripping, and remains so for its entire seven-episode run. The production is designed within an inch of its life, each set looking like a glamourous real estate ad, and each costume looking like it came off a 1960s runway. Frank, who writes and directs every episode, stacks them with zinger lines and little visual flourishes, especially in the chess scenes. The editing and structure of every game makes it feel less like watching two people sit across from each other, thinking hard, and more like a choreographed dance. A scene in the third episode, in which Beth slowly figures out she has a crush on her competitor, is so charged that you can’t take your eyes off the screen. Frank does the impossible: he doesn’t just make chess interesting to watch, he makes it can’t-tear-your-eyes-away compelling, investing these games with stakes that pay off beautifully for the audience.

It’s not only Frank doing the heavy lifting, though. He’s assembled a cast that makes an indelible impression, from newcomer Moses Ingram as Jolene, Beth’s childhood best friend to former child star Thomas Brodie-Sangster as, somehow, a hipster douchebag chess pro. As Beth, Taylor-Joy delivers her second star making performance of the year – after a fabulous turn as Jane Austen’s Emma – and creating a more complex character than just another troubled genius. While the show never noisily makes chess a metaphor for anything, Beth’s immense, instinctual skill  is her guiding philosophy through life. It gives the character a feline quality: always guarded, ready to jump, and, as she grows in confidence, ready to lash out and defend herself. Her performance is what gives the series its energy. We’re as invested in Beth, and her life, as she is.

On the flipside of this is Marielle Heller’s brilliant, sad performance as Beth’s adoptive mother Alma. Heller, who directed the excellent Can You Ever Forgive Me? and the heartfelt A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood, brings the same sensitivity to Alma that she did to those films. It’s a performance quite unlike any I’ve ever seen. Heller takes the stereotype of the buttoned down, suburban housewife and flips it on its head; she’s downcast without being defeated, and sharp without being brutal. Her Alma is tragically full of need, and when she sees an avenue – Beth’s emerging career as a chess prodigy – to fulfill that need, she jumps on it. The relationship between the two is one of the more enthralling aspects of The Queen’s Gambit, not quite the relationship between a parent and child, but more a symbiotic relationship of two broken people making each other whole.

Marielle Heller as Alma in The Queen’s Gambit. (Photo: Netflix)

The Queen’s Gambit’s greatest asset is that nothing about it is quite expected. Events unfold in a way that’s twisty without being full Shyamalanian. Obviously, the plot is the work of novelist Walter Tevis, but Frank’s adaptation makes it feel fresh in a way that a 35 year old novel just shouldn’t. Every scene feels like its own little pop song, whether it’s Beth bantering with her defeated foes or reasserting her value to the adoptive father who abandoned her. The Queen’s Gambit is full of hooks in a way that few shows are, making it genuinely fun to watch.

However, the cost of this fun is that The Queen’s Gambit often lacks the weight that would make it truly profound. Beth’s addiction is rarely the problem the show seems to suggest it is, and her battle with both alcohol and pills has a clean, tidy resolution that makes little sense. The Queen’s Gambit uses addiction as a narrative hurdle, and never interrogates what it might mean for Beth that her addiction is so clearly tied up with her success. No doubt, The Queen’s Gambit would be a different beast if Beth’s addiction was properly addressed, but it’d undeniably be a lot less enjoyable.

That’s the one strange swerve in a production that’s more assured than any I’ve seen in quite a while. There’s no doubt, for even one moment of its screentime, that The Queen’s Gambit is exactly the show that Scott Frank wanted to make: another striking subversion of a genre that is all too familiar, and a shot of adrenaline into a game that all but a small group have written off as boring. If the series’ appeal may prove a little ephemeral does it really matter if it’s this enjoyable in the moment?

The Queen’s Gambit is available on Netflix now.

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OPINIONPop CultureNovember 18, 2020

Remembering Captain Planet, 30 years on

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Three decades since it first emerged on our screens, Captain Planet and the Planeteers will always be remembered as the show that introduced an entire generation to corporate greed and environmental protection. 

Children of the late 1980s and early 1990s had a number of iconic cartoons to choose from: Transformers, He-Man, Gummi Bears, My Little Pony, Dangermouse, Inspector Gadget, Care Bears – the after school hours provided hours of engaging entertainment in an era before the internet and personal devices annexed our attention.

These shows were colourful, had catchy theme songs and fantastical plot lines. But there was one in particular that burst onto that crowded cartoon scene with a very, very different spirit. That show was Captain Planet and the Planeteers.

The villains, heroes and mythology

This year is the 30th anniversary of that show I remember watching as a kid all those years ago. Even back then I realised it had a different heartbeat than the others. It sought to promote a responsible approach to our environment a few decades before the idea became mainstream. But it was also ahead of its time in a number of other very interesting ways.

For example, the villains were bad in different ways to other evil characters like Megatron, Skeletor or Dr Claw. Instead, the Captain Planet characters usually represented corporate business or industry with profit driven motives who took pleasure in trashing the environment. Their greed and self-interest was portrayed as negative in an era obsessed with profits, globalism, economic booms and Wall Street success. The pollution-creating villains had names that gave them away: Looten Plunder, Hoggish Greedly and Verminous Skumm.

Hoggish Greedly (Screenshot)

The good characters, on the other hand, were a multi-ethnic group of young teenagers who foiled the villains plans, with the help of the eponymous hero Captain Planet. The diversity of the group meant everyone watching would have someone they could identify with. They came from all over the planet – North America, Eastern Europe, Asia, South America. The fact that their leader, Kwame, was from Africa showed an almost effortless progressiveness long before such inclusivity became more common and deliberate in other media.

The mythology is important to understand as it helps explain the tone: The spirit of the planet (Gaia – voiced by Whoopi Goldberg in the first seasons) brings together five young people who are each given a ring that has the power to summon the elements: earth, wind, fire, water and perhaps the most powerful, heart. The plot line was consistent every episode: the planeteers would combine their powers to summon Captain Planet and take down the villains who wanted to pollute and destroy the environment.

Perhaps the most iconic feature of the show was the theme song, which immortalised the ethos of the show in our memories: “Captain Planet, he’s our hero, gonna take pollution down to zero”. It went on to have a pseudo rapping/chanting section which went like this:

We’re the planeteers, You can be one too!
‘Cause saving our planet is the thing to do,
Looting and polluting is not the way,
Hear what Captain Planet has to say: “THE POWER IS YOURS!!”

Getting beneath the surface

The show was a relatively early example of edutainment – content that sought not just to entertain but to create awareness about important issues. For the kids that watched it, Captain Planet fostered the idea of environmentalism perhaps more than any other piece of media. But what was the story behind Captain Planet? Was it really just an environmentally-focused show with a consistent theme of “saving the day” against corporate greed? Overall, with childhood memories as my evidence, I would say yes. But as an adult, if you look behind the scenes of Captain Planet and its catchy theme song, you find what was actually the pet project of billionaire media mogul Ted Turner.

That raises some questions, such as why the many celebrity names that made cameos on the show appeared mainly in the first seasons only – did they get disillusioned with the motives of the series? Those involved included Meg Ryan, Jeff Goldblum, Sting, Neil Patrick Harris and Martin Sheen. A cynic might wonder if the show was an example of “green washing” – a show to entertain kids while selling advertising space, using environmentalism to appear relevant and conscientious.

Ted Turner (Photo: Ben Rose/Getty Images for UNICEF)

Turner himself appeared in an episode called “Who’s Running the Show?” as an environment-friendly media mogul inconspicuously named “Fred Lerner”. In the episode, the character became an ally for Captain Planet and dedicated TV programming to the environment.

Despite Turner’s obvious fingerprints on the show, I’d say it had a net positive impact on getting children to at least think about important issues like pollution, recycling and care for the planet.

Of course, the other flaw is the fact that while the planeteers used their rings with good intentions, every episode they ended up summoning Captain Planet – perhaps sending a detrimental message that an adult or hero has to be there to fix the problem. Perhaps it would have been more interesting, and empowering, if sometimes the young people were able to save the day on their own. It also oversimplifies the complex issues being discussed by assuming that they can be solved within a 20 minute plot line.

The legacy

The show had a fairly long life. It ran for six seasons until 1996, with Captain Planet saving the environment for a total of 113 episodes. Over the years there have been rumours that a feature length movie might emerge, some with a theory that Leonardo DiCaprio was looking at a reboot. While there are currently no plans it wouldn’t be much of a suprise to one day see a reboot along the lines of Transformers, Scooby Doo, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Pokémon, Power Rangers or the Smurfs. Mining the nostalgia of childhood can be a lucrative business.

The show has also been featured in other pop culture like Funny or Die sketches with Don Cheadle as Captain Planet.

One of the main legacies is the Captain Planet Foundation, which was set up in 1991 and runs Ocean Heroes, Project Learning Garden and Project Hero. Its website talks about “empowering next generation changemakers” and gives out grants to programmes that get children out into the environment. The current chair is Laura Turner Seydel, Ted Turner’s daughter.

So what is the legacy of Captain Planet? Having been one of those 90s kids who watched dozens of episodes, I’d say it it had a really positive impact on many of my generation. It’s with some sadness that I remember it, though, because clearly we did not get things right; the environment is in need of even more help today. While it may have been a bit cheesy, at least the show was trying to address some of the bigger issues we face and making the point that we are all living on one planet. That message – that we should all do our part as Planeteers – is needed now more than ever.

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