Looking back, The Talented Mr Ripley was lightning in a bottle. It had a cast of young, immensely talented actors – Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett, Philip Seymour Hoffman – all hitting the sweet spot of emerging Hollywood stardom. It was essentially the Euphoria of the '90s, set against the postcard beauty of Italy.
Despite being a darkly psychological thriller with more than one bludgeoning scene to its name, it was (and still is) a sumptuous, sparkling world to inhabit for two hours.
You could probably draw a direct line from the 1999 film to the boom in Italian tourism and the heartthrob status of lazy toff characters like One Day's Dexter Mayhew.
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Much like One Day, Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley novel has added a new benchmark to the bestselling-book-to-blockbuster-film pipeline: the Netflix TV adaptation.
The new eight-parter Ripley ages up its retelling with Andrew Scott as Tom Ripley. Playing into both his Hot Priest and Moriarty roles, it's brilliant casting for a man we're meant to be simultaneously attracted to and repelled by.
For those familiar with neither book nor film, we meet Ripley as a listless New York grifter who, by an immense stroke of luck, is pulled out of the cheque-fraud grind to travel to Italy and wrangle a shipping magnate's failson back to the States.
Enter Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn), the opposite of Ripley in every sense. Rich and charismatic, Dickie is a man Ripley wants to be just as much as he wants to be with. A tale of murder, deceit and fraud unspools after Ripley fails to make the latter happen so settles for the former.
The book has been adapted by Oscar-winning writer and director Steven Zaillian, who has a diverse and impressive list of IMDb credits including The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Irishman and Schindler's List. Despite the pedigree, Zaillian has made a number of baffling stylistic choices.
Why are the episode titles in aggressive block characters? Why is the whole thing, which leans into the escapism of its lavish Italian setting, in muted black and white? Why is this wicked and psychologically probing tale so slow and – occasionally – boring?
The original film was shot through with homoerotic subtext, which, via Netflix's blunt instruments, becomes text. Opinions may vary on whether this makes the end project queerer for the better or just less nuanced.
Part of the problem is that Ripley doesn't have a sound handle on its central character as the zeitgeist knows him. Matt Damon's Ripley brags that chief among his talents are "telling lies, forging signatures, impersonating practically anybody". Not here they aren't.
This Ripley, particularly in the beginning, is nowhere near as convincing a con artist. Ripley as smart aleck is lost in favour of Ripley as dopey chancer. It certainly makes sense why he's had "talented" stripped from his title.
He's had by tourist touts, is petrified of the winding cliff roads of rural Italy and when the only swimsuits on sale in Amalfi's Atrani are budgie smugglers, he's used for laughs.
Perhaps it's a purposeful reinvention, to norm-ify the preternaturally evil Ripley, but blimey, what a character to toy around with. Without Ripley, we likely wouldn't have Saltburn (and all the annoying discourse it spawned).
Speaking of characters who have been upended, Dickie is another rewrite. Where Law was a manic tornado who everyone wanted to get caught up in, Flynn's Dickie is just a dull, rich bloke.
Without the wistful folly of youth he's a wretched figure, chasing the glory of becoming the painter he's not good enough to be. It's sobering to think this is probably who Law's Dickie would have become a decade on from the film.
On the flipside, Dakota Fanning's Marge Sherwood is an unfriendly revelation. Her fledgling writer is understandably suspicious of Ripley from the off and more believably territorial of Dickie than Paltrow's doe-eyed, lovelorn incarnation.
In a vacuum, these shifts in characterisation and style might not be for the worse. Scott, Flynn and Fanning, as well as Eliot Sumner as Freddie, all turn in solid performances and look lovely enough under the black and white Instagram filter. But when you're watching this with the original film in mind, Ripley is denuded of not only colour, but magic.
Not to keep harping on about that film, but while it's so good, it's also terribly lopsided. The first half is sublime: moody jazz bars, gorgeous piazzas, killer costumes, Italy, beautiful stars bouncing off each other. It's a fantastic portrait of being young, wealthy and careless, and its inherent seduction is also a reminder of how dangerous the allure of those things can be.
The just desserts come in the second half. It is darker, duplicitous and significantly less fun, in large part because the raw charisma and plot engine emanating from Law's pores has been lost to the Mediterranean.
Ripley is far more even-keeled and rooted in the feel of that second half. Instead of those year-abroad thrills and tensions, we are alone with Scott for whole logistics-focused episodes dealing with the rhythms of body disposal or the long con, with no dialogue beyond what his blacker-than-black shark eyes are saying.
The Netflix show's ending suggests that the franchisification of Highsmith's serial killer saga – which the films never delivered on – could yet be coming to the House of Tudum. If so, let's hope they find some colour along the way.
Ripley and The Talented Mr Ripley are available to stream on Netflix.
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Previously Deputy TV Editor at Digital Spy and, before that, a TV Reporter at The Mirror, Rebecca can now be found crafting expert analysis of the TV landscape, when she's not talking on the BBC or Times Radio about everything from the latest season of Bridgerton or The White Lotus to whatever chaos is unfolding in the various Love Island villas. When she's not bingeing a boxset, in-the-wild sightings of Rebecca have included stints on the National TV Awards and BAFTAs red carpets, and post-match video explainers of the reality TV we're all watching.
