Verdict: Ripley is worth watching if you want a colder, more methodical take on Patricia Highsmith’s crime story. Andrew Scott gives Tom Ripley a frightening competence, while Steven Zaillian turns the familiar plot into an exacting study of how a false life is built, furnished, and defended.
This eight-episode limited series premiered on Netflix on April 4, 2024. It is not a conventional remake of Anthony Minghella’s colorful 1999 film. It is a closer, more patient reinterpretation of Highsmith’s 1955 novel, with the emphasis shifted from romantic temptation to practical deception.
Spoiler warning: The review below discusses the series’ ending and its possible continuation.
What is Ripley about?
Steven Zaillian’s Ripley begins with a simple proposition. Tom Ripley, a New York grifter played by Andrew Scott, is hired by a wealthy industrialist to travel to Italy and persuade Dickie Greenleaf, the industrialist’s wayward son, to come home. Tom accepts the assignment because it offers access to a world he has been observing from the outside: money, art, travel, elegant rooms, and the effortless social confidence of people who have never had to counterfeit belonging.
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Once Tom reaches Italy, the job becomes something else. He does not merely try to persuade Dickie to return. He studies Dickie, studies the people around him, and begins to imagine how the life might be taken over. The series follows that process from the Amalfi Coast to Rome, Sicily, and Venice, as Tom gradually assumes Dickie’s identity and tries to keep police investigation from catching up with him.
The official episode progression tells you what kind of thriller this is. The story moves from the initial assignment and Dickie’s villa to Tom’s scheme, his invented Roman life, the arrival of an unexpected visitor, Inspector Ravini’s investigation, and Tom’s reinvention in Venice. Each stage is less about a single shocking revelation than about the practical problems created by the previous lie.
This is a reinterpretation, not a glossy rehash
Calling Ripley a remake is understandable but incomplete. The 1999 film is the unavoidable comparison because Anthony Minghella assembled an extraordinary cast—Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett, and Philip Seymour Hoffman—and gave the story a seductive, sunlit atmosphere. That film makes Italy feel like a dream Tom might enter if he can only make himself sufficiently desirable.
Zaillian’s series deliberately refuses to reproduce that dream. It follows Highsmith’s first Ripley novel more closely, changing and expanding details without wholesale reengineering the story. The result is less interested in the emotional fantasy of becoming Dickie than in the labor required to imitate him.
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A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11| Minghella’s 1999 film | Zaillian’s Ripley |
|---|---|
| Immediate, romantic, and sensuous | Analytical, austere, and procedural |
| Italy as a seductive fantasy | Italy as a network of spaces, routines, and risks |
| Tom’s longing has tragic emotional heat | Tom’s envy and adaptability receive greater emphasis |
| The thriller moves with star-driven momentum | The series lingers on concealment, travel, cleanup, and consequences |
The difference is not simply that one version is in color and the other is in black and white. The film wants to make you feel the attraction of Dickie’s world. The series asks you to watch Tom reverse-engineer it. Its central question is not whether Tom deserves the beautiful life, but whether he can counterfeit belonging convincingly enough to keep it.
Andrew Scott makes Tom Ripley frighteningly capable
Andrew Scott is the series’ strongest argument. His Tom is substantially older than Matt Damon’s version was in the 1999 film, and that casting decision changes the character’s texture. This Tom appears to have spent years collecting petty frauds, humiliations, resentments, and observations. He is not discovering deception as a teenager discovers romance. He is a practiced observer who has finally been given a larger operation.
Scott plays Tom as someone who treats personality as equipment. His politeness is reconnaissance. His pauses feel like calculations. His silences are not empty; they are watchful. When he changes his manner, accent, or posture, the transformation feels less like a theatrical impersonation than a temporary operating system installed for a particular task.
That performance solves one of the character’s central difficulties. Tom must remain compelling without being secretly virtuous. Scott does not ask the audience to excuse him or to mistake his intelligence for moral depth. Instead, he makes Tom’s attention itself fascinating. We watch because Tom is constantly solving problems, and because every solution creates a new vulnerability.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsThe performance also preserves Tom’s psychological opacity. The series brings viewers unusually close to him without giving us a stable explanation for him. His past remains uncertain, and his own statements cannot be trusted. That uncertainty is not a missing backstory waiting to be filled in. It is appropriate to a man who has made self-invention his primary survival skill.
Rank #2
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Dickie and Marge change the social pressure
Johnny Flynn’s Dickie Greenleaf is intentionally less magnetic than Jude Law’s version. That is another major departure from the 1999 film. Flynn’s Dickie is attractive and privileged, but the series filters his paintings, Marge’s writing, and the expatriate lifestyle through Tom’s contemptuous perspective. The creative circle looks less like an irresistible bohemian paradise and more like a self-satisfied bubble built on money.
That choice is important because it makes Tom’s envy more complicated. He is not necessarily pursuing a world that deserves his worship. He is pursuing the ability to move through it without being exposed as an outsider. The paintings and parties matter less as evidence of genius than as badges of social permission.
Dakota Fanning’s Marge Sherwood provides the most effective counterweight. She is not merely a romantic obstacle or a person who happens to notice that something is wrong. She understands the mismatch between Tom’s behavior and the identity he is trying to inhabit. Her suspicion creates social pressure that Tom cannot always charm, flatter, or outmaneuver.
Compared with the 1999 film, Ripley has less overt romantic heat and less ensemble sparkle. That may disappoint viewers looking for the earlier film’s mutual attraction, but it serves Zaillian’s purpose. The series is not primarily about desire making art and wealth appear interchangeable. It is about Tom studying that fantasy and reproducing its surface.
The real subject is the process of crime
The most distinctive thing about Ripley is how much time it spends on work. Tom’s crimes are not treated as isolated acts that end when the violence stops. They produce objects that must be moved, rooms that must be cleaned, stories that must be synchronized, identities that must be maintained, and routines that must not attract attention.
That focus turns the familiar story into a procedural portrait of fraud. Tom must think about transportation, timing, access, witnesses, clothing, documents, money, and the physical geography of every place he enters. A stairwell, a hotel corridor, a boat, or a narrow street can become as important as a confession. The suspense often comes from whether Tom can move something without being seen or complete a mundane errand without revealing the extraordinary lie underneath it.
This is also where the series becomes morally harsher than the film. Minghella’s version is energized by Tom’s emotional longing and the seductive possibility that identity might be fluid. Zaillian’s version makes us spend more time with the consequences. The question is not only whether Tom will commit violence. It is whether he can solve all the boring, ugly, logistical problems that violence leaves behind.
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The approach makes Tom’s false life feel assembled rather than magically acquired. Every apparent success depends on another concealment. Every comfortable room contains the risk of discovery. His greatest talent is not simply lying; it is recognizing which details other people take for granted and then reproducing them.
Black-and-white Italy is a character in its own right
The black-and-white cinematography is not a decorative attempt to make the series look prestigious. Zaillian conceived Ripley as a foreboding suspense story with a film-noir quality, set in the winter of 1960 rather than in a permanently sunny postcard version of Italy.
Rank #3
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Director of photography Robert Elswit uses the restricted palette to emphasize texture, architectural geometry, darkness, reflective surfaces, and moral severity. The absence of color removes some of the easy sensuality associated with the 1999 film. Italy is still beautiful, but beauty no longer functions as an invitation. It becomes a surface Tom must learn to navigate.
The recurring compositions place Tom inside windows, mirrors, doorways, staircases, and other visual enclosures. These frames suggest both cages and theatrical prosceniums. Tom is always performing, but he is also always boxed in by the role he has chosen. The visual design turns identity into a spatial problem: he must fit himself into a life that was built for someone else.
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The locations make movement suspenseful. Atrani’s steep paths, Roman interiors, Venetian water, church architecture, galleries, hotels, and stairwells are not passive backdrops. They dictate what Tom can carry, where he can hide, how quickly he can escape, and who might see him. A simple journey becomes a moral obstacle course.
The production’s formal control was recognized by the Television Academy. Ripley received 13 listed Emmy nominations and won four, including awards for Zaillian’s direction, Elswit’s cinematography, Fanning’s supporting performance, and sound editing for the episode “III Sommerso.”
The slow pace is both the point and the problem
Ripley is slow by contemporary streaming-thriller standards. It spends long stretches on surveillance, travel, concealment, waiting, cleanup, and bureaucratic consequences. Viewers who enjoy watching a plan take shape may find that accumulation intensely suspenseful. Viewers who want rapid reversals and constant emotional escalation may find the series overextended.
The fairest criticism is that the show sometimes mistakes duration for pressure. Its cover-up sequences are conceptually fascinating, but not every minute of Tom’s labor generates equal suspense. The controlled register can also narrow the emotional range. Because Tom is so guarded and the direction is so disciplined, the series occasionally feels more admired than felt.
Still, the pace is not an accidental weakness. It is the show’s governing experiment. Tom’s life is not glamorous once he must maintain it. It is a sequence of errands, calculations, lies, and hazards. Zaillian wants the audience to sit with the consequences that a faster thriller would skip.
Whether that experiment works depends on your tolerance for procedural detail and visual contemplation. If you need every episode to accelerate toward a new cliffhanger, Ripley may feel languid. If you are interested in the mechanics of a false identity, the slowness becomes a form of pressure: the longer Tom has to keep acting, the more opportunities he has to fail.
How it compares with Highsmith’s novel
Ripley is based on Patricia Highsmith’s first Ripley novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley, published in 1955. The series’ relationship to the book helps explain why it feels different from the 1999 film. Zaillian’s adaptation is scrupulous about following the novel’s line, while expanding sections of the story and bringing the practical consequences of Tom’s decisions into sharper focus.
Rank #4
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Highsmith’s Tom is not simply a poor man who wants to become a rich man. He is a person who sees identity as something that can be borrowed, performed, and improved through observation. The series understands that idea and gives it physical form. Clothing, rooms, signatures, furniture, art, and manners all become components in a constructed self.
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The show is also less invested in making Tom’s longing resemble a tragic form of love. Its Tom wants access and control at least as much as he wants affection. That makes him more frightening, but it also makes the series less immediately romantic than its predecessor.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Spoilers: What the ending means
The finale places Tom in Venice, where he has adopted another identity and built an enviable life from accumulated lies. On the surface, he has reached the fantasy that motivated the original scheme. He has money, taste, a cultivated environment, and the ability to move through elite spaces without immediately being questioned.
But the ending does not suggest that Tom has discovered his true self. It suggests that he has become more practiced at managing fragments of false selves. The return to Caravaggio and the introduction of a Picasso connect Tom’s fraud to art, authorship, forgery, and fragmentation. Zaillian has described the cubist image as a way of representing Tom’s many personas and identities as pieces of a fragmented whole.
That imagery gives the finale an elegant ambiguity. Tom’s success is real in the practical sense: he has survived and created a convincing life. It is also unstable because the life has no secure original. He is not revealing an authentic identity beneath the disguises. He is arranging disguises into something that other people will accept as a person.
The closing material also introduces John Malkovich as Reeves Minot, a character from the second Ripley novel. Malkovich previously played the character in the 2002 film Ripley’s Game. Zaillian has said that he wanted to introduce Reeves early because the later books show Tom in different ways as he grows older.
That gives the ending the shape of both a conclusion and a possible bridge to Highsmith’s wider five-book Ripley sequence. It does not amount to a confirmed second season. The available official material records Zaillian’s interest in adapting later books, not a verified renewal or production commitment.
What critics said
The critical response was strong, though not unanimous. In the captured Rotten Tomatoes listing, the limited series stood at 86% from 135 critics and 82% audience approval from more than 500 ratings. Its consensus emphasized the opulent black-and-white presentation and Scott’s performance.
Metacritic’s season-one critic page listed a 76 metascore. The collected reviews commonly praised the visual achievement, Scott’s work, and the freshness of the adaptation while identifying the slow or languid pace as the principal drawback.
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That is the most accurate way to understand the reception. Ripley is not effortless entertainment, and it does not try to be. Its aesthetic discipline, acting, and adaptation intelligence outweigh the deliberate tempo for many viewers, but the tempo remains a genuine barrier rather than a criticism that can simply be dismissed as a failure to appreciate art.
Should you watch Ripley?
Watch it if you enjoy psychologically focused crime stories, literary adaptations, noir, formal cinematography, and performances built from restraint rather than charm. It is especially rewarding if you are interested in how crimes are planned and sustained after the dramatic act itself.
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The two versions are best treated as complementary rather than mutually exclusive. Minghella made Tom’s desired world feel intoxicating. Zaillian makes us watch him manufacture access to it. The film is more immediately sensuous; the series is more analytical. One is a seductive thriller about desire. The other is a procedural study of counterfeit belonging.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Netflix’s Ripley a remake of the 1999 film?
It is better described as a new adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Talented Mr. Ripley. It shares the core story with Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film but follows the novel more closely and emphasizes crime’s practical consequences rather than romantic and emotional heat.
Is Ripley worth watching if I loved the 1999 movie?
Yes, provided you want a different experience. Andrew Scott’s older, more controlled Tom is less romantically appealing than Matt Damon’s, and the series is much slower. In exchange, it offers more procedural detail, a harsher moral atmosphere, and exceptional black-and-white visual design.
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Will there be a second season of Ripley?
There is no verified second-season renewal or production commitment in the available material. Steven Zaillian has expressed interest in adapting later Ripley novels, and the finale introduces Reeves Minot as a possible bridge, but creative interest should not be confused with an announced continuation.
What book is Ripley based on?
The series is based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley, the first book in her five-novel Ripley sequence.
The Bottom Line
Bottom line: Andrew Scott leads a hell of a remake precisely because he does not try to out-Damon Damon. He reveals a different Tom Ripley—older, more watchful, and more frighteningly competent—while Steven Zaillian turns a familiar crime story into an exacting study of how a false life is assembled and defended. The pace will test some viewers, but for those willing to inhabit its methodical rhythm, Ripley is a formally striking and intellectually fresh reinterpretation rather than a redundant remake.
