These scenes are difficult cracks to squeeze through for Taylor-Joy, because any of these eureka moments could play as cheap theatrics. Her work, much of it captured through resolute close-ups, sees her micro-expressions outwardly emitting the fury, confusion, and fearless strategies firing off inside Beth’s mind. The drama of their matches, and Beth’s battles with other lesser opponents, are driven by Taylor-Joy’s evocative performance. As opposed to her chess pieces, he’s immovable. But she can’t overcome the Russian Grandmaster Borgov (Marcin Dorocinski). She strikes with a deadly accuracy born from an intuitive wit. As one player surmises, she’s all attack. Alluringly directed by Frank, who also wrote the series, Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit finds its closest comparisons in Queen of Katwe and Pawn Sacrifice by centering its narrative on a woman prodigy who fights through the weight of genius. But surprisingly, the seven-episode miniseries isn’t dialogue-heavy mostly because Beth is so taciturn. Scott Frank, Allan Scott, and William Horberg developed The Queen’s Gambit from the absorbing 1983 novel of the same name by Walter Tevis (The Hustler and The Color of Money).
But when a series comes along that’s centered around a child prodigy - in this case, Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy), who arrives as an orphan at the Methuen Home for Girls after the tragic death of her mother - you can’t help but be stimulated by the premise, even if the results are uneven. Chess and lively aren’t usually used in the same sentence.