When you think of an exhilarating sports move, pushing a chess pawn two spaces is not the first thing that comes to mind. But in Netflix’s new wildly popular show “The Queen’s Gambit,” grandmaster-level chess somehow becomes the most exciting game in the world, and a rare example of a sport playing a lead role in a prestige TV show.
The show follows Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy), a young orphan who learns chess from a janitor while juicing on performance altering drugs handed out by the orphanage staff to help with “disposition.” Saving the unnamed tranquilizers for just before bed, she stays awake staring at the ceiling, leveling up her skills by playing imaginary matches against herself. Other players at local tournaments laugh at her because of both her age and gender, until she proceeds to calmly demolish her older, more experienced competitors.
The first episode pulls some Fancy TV Foreshadowing by opening with a Paris tournament match against the Big Baddie Kingslayer (a Russian named Borgov), to which Harmon shows up half-drunk after an all-night bender that ends with a naked woman in her bed. It’s part of a whirlwind tour to far-flung locales like Mexico City, in which she casually embarrasses men twice her age, both playing and drinking like a Russian grandmaster.
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It’s a classic underdog sports story: Unlikely prodigy battles demons to become the best in the world. But we are not talking about high-octane sports like football or basketball or knife throwing (someone should really make a knife throwing show). This is chess, the least glamorous sport one could possibly imagine. Which is why it’s so shocking that “Queen’s Gambit” is the most exciting sports show since “Friday Night Lights” and perhaps the only show focusing on athletics that’s worthy of the title prestige TV.
Despite the documentary greatness of “The Last Dance” and “The Shop” and “30 for 30” and “Cheer” and “Last Chance U” and “Hard Knocks,” there hasn’t been a fictional sports show that’s really #strivedforgreatness since “Friday Night Lights.” The fantasy football antics of “The League” don’t quite count and not even The Rock could save “Ballers” from its own self-seriousness (no matter how many HBO commercials tried to convince me otherwise). The first season of “GLOW” could be a contender, but it deflated once it lost the against-all-oddsness. “Cobra Kai” is fantastic fun, but too pulpy for the big leagues. “Sports Night” was charming, but more about the media. It’s a testament to just how hard it is to make a fictional sports show that “Coach” and “Hangin' with Mr. Cooper” make it into this conversation.
"The Queen's Gambit" is an unlikely contender for the first ever scripted prestige sports TV show.
Courtesy of NetflixIn American culture there are perhaps no bigger heroes or anti-heroes than athletes, but somehow they’ve never made it into TV writers' rooms. Is it that the Lebrons of the world already get so much screentime that networks wouldn’t want to cannibalize their other programming? Or are the plotlines so well-worn that only the “Eastbound & Down”-style outcasts are considered interesting? Is the type of precision and dedication exuded by superstars just not compatible with TV storytelling?
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I think the crux of the problem with a Prestige Sports Show is that it’s just way more interesting to watch the real thing, and that’s why “Queen’s Gambit” succeeds: Professional chess is not at all entertaining to watch.
It doesn’t need to be, because it’s edited such that you rarely see the board for more than a split second. The show is not concerned with teaching how the Sicilian Defense works, no matter how many times it’s mentioned with hushed reverence. Even a grandmaster would have no idea what’s actually going on here. It’s mostly just two players staring at each other.
"The Queen's Gambit" is an unlikely contender for the first ever scripted prestige sports TV show.
Charlie Gray/NetflixAlthough I have made it very clear that chess is a boring thing only nerds do, these games are actually riveting. In the later episodes when adult-aged Beth pulls a “thank u, next” with each of her doe-eyed trainers, the tension is downright horny. It’s pure competition, free of the context of rules of the game. There’s no suspension of disbelief necessary for that Hail Mary pass, because we don’t even know who’s on offense.
Once you factor in all the prestige TV tricks you know and love, like stunning costumes (“Mad Men”), the ticking time bomb of substance abuse (“Breaking Bad”) and the aftermath of family trauma (basically all of them), those extended eye-daggers exchanged over a chessboard make for some of the sharpest scenes in television history. And the wildest thing is, they might as well have been playing checkers the whole time.
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October 31, 2020 at 06:10PM
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Is Netflix's most popular show 'The Queen's Gambit' the first prestige TV sports drama? - SFGate
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