How ‘Ripley’ Finds Beauty in Shades of Gray

To watch Ripley is to be hypnotized by its quiet, seductive beauty. Shot in crisp black and white with dizzying noir stylishness, the Netflix series draws viewers into the solitary and sad world of New York City grifter Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott), then pulls them along with him as his life is changed by an ultra-wealthy man’s request that Tom find his wayward son Dickie (Johnny Flynn), who is living a deliciously posh life on the Amalfi Coast of Italy, and persuade him to come home.

Creator/writer/director Steven Zaillian calibrates the finest of details to place us in Tom’s experience, with close-ups on Tom’s scuzzy bar of soap in his New York flat and lingering looks at Dickie’s expensive fountain pen, background sound effects subtly emphasizing a scurrying rat or a wafting aria. (I watched it with the English subtitles on, and it’s fun to see how many times the captions have to describe specific ambient sounds.) This approach distinguishes this adaptation from the sunny lushness of its most famous forebear, The Talented Mr. Ripley, the 1999 Anthony Minghella film starring Matt Damon and Jude Law.

In fact, this marks the sixth screen adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel and its four sequels. But it earns its existence in both its unique approach to the material and its ability, as a streaming series with eight luxurious hours of runtime, to live Tom’s life as it slowly morphs from a daily struggle to a sparkly glide through a blessed life of leisure. It uses some of this extra time to indulge an obsession with the Baroque painter Caravaggio—known for his skillful contrasting of light and dark, an artful reflection of the show’s themes as well as its film technique. (Vulture has a glorious breakdown of similarities between the show’s visuals and Caravaggio.) The series also has the advantage of centering the always-excellent Andrew Scott, who imbues the title character with both pathos and mystery, often taking viewers through an entire arc of changing emotions and motivations without uttering a word.

And Ripley takes on new significance in a social climate that is reckoning with enormous wealth disparities—and the realization that the bootstrap-powered American dream is more mythical than ever. It joins a barrage of television shows that skewer the rich for our entertainment, such as Succession, White Lotus, and Your Friends and Neighbors. Instead of poking holes in the dream, however, Ripley invites us to cheer for the psychopathic outsider as he attempts to steal the good life out from under the privileged. Here, the rich are not neurotic fools; they’re simply so blind to the scale of their good fortune that they can’t comprehend what someone like Tom might do to snatch it from them. It’s a story that’s both timeless, and perfect for 2025.

Where to Watch: Netflix