Ever since it dropped on Netflix worldwide in end-October, The Queen’s Gambit has quickly become a phenomenon. The seven-episode miniseries that follows the giddying global success of a fictional female chess player battling emotional upheaval and alcohol and drug dependency in the 1950s and 1960s has not only caught the imagination of viewers worldwide, but has also spurred a resurgence in public interest around the game.
The success of the show, created by Scott Frank and Allan Scott, has thrust actor Anya Taylor-Joy — who plays the protagonist Beth Harmon — firmly into the spotlight, even as The Queen’s Gambit continues to top streaming charts more than six weeks after its release.
A PHENOMENON
According to Netflix, The Queen’s Gambit is currently its number-one ranked programme in as many as 63 countries, with a whopping 62 million households choosing to watch the series in its first 28 days. The show’s themes of fighting-against-all-odds, empowerment and gender reversal-powered triumph, have resonated globally, aided in no small measure by a deeply affecting central act from Taylor-Joy who makes Beth Harmon one of the most intriguing characters we have seen on screen this year, a woman constantly breaking the glass ceiling, but one who veers between a contrasting addiction to winning and a compulsive urge for self-sabotage.
Tracing a young orphan’s inexplicable adeptness at chess, The Queen’s Gambit travels across the world, with Beth taking on the big guns of the game — till then a male bastion (“I would say it is much easier to play chess without the burden of an Adam’s apple,” is one of the show’s most memorable dialogues) — to give us a compelling coming-of-age story of a shero who, interestingly, may not be likable all the time. Beth is an awkward, borderline-sociopathic teen who metamorphoses into a confident young woman, but she’s also constantly battling her own demons, something that contributes to the universality of the appeal of The Queen’s Gambit. It scores for being a rare tale of female genius, one which is enigmatic but also emotionally stunted.
The Queen’s Gambit also benefits from its effective portrayal of life during the ’50s and ’60s. Beth Harmon is a chess prodigy, but she’s also a young girl who loves fashion and the good life. The Queen’s Gambit is an enthralling capture of the lifestyle of the time. Adding to the show’s popularity has been its remarkable performances, with every actor bringing in their A-game. At the forefront of it all is, of course, Taylor-Joy whose trademark stance as Beth — a faint widening of an eye, a miniscule tilt of the head and a twitch of the lip as she surveys the chess pieces in front of her — remains the show’s most indelible image.
Netflix reveals that The Queen’s Gambit has made it to the Top 10 in 92 countries, while it has a rare 100 per cent critic’s score on review website Rottentomatoes.com. On movie database site IMDb, The Queen’s Gambit has registered a remarkable 8.7/10 score. No mean feat, considering shows frontlined by women, even after some amount of success over the last few years, still struggle to be green-lit. The phenomenal success of the show has even seen Walter Tevis’s novel of the same name, on which it is based, enter The New York Times’ bestseller list, 37 years after its release.
CHECKMATE!
One doesn’t need to understand chess to be able to enjoy The Queen’s Gambit, but what has contributed to the success of the show is that it acts as a backstage pass to the game, which many of us have long dismissed as cryptic and yawn inducing. The show, even as it compellingly narrates the story of a wily young American taking on a veteran Russian grandmaster on his turf and beating him, makes the game both thrilling and interesting. Before the third episode sets in, we are cheering Beth on as she talks about Sicilian Defense and trading rooks and pawns, even if most of us have only a superficial understanding of the game.
The numbers prove it. Chess.com has revealed that the interest in the game spurred by the show has seen its daily registrations go up by as much as 400 per cent. The website has revealed that since release, it has seen roughly 2.5 million new members join in, while Google has reported that worldwide, the searches for “chess” are at their highest level in 14 years.
According to Chess.com, Beth Harmon’s dizzying rise has prompted more women than usual to register on its site, and they are also spending more time on the site than men. The website has even launched ‘Beth Harmon bots’, enabling users to play a game against the show’s protagonist. Searches for chess sets on eBay reportedly almost tripled after the show’s release.
That The Queen’s Gambit has renewed interest in chess globally comes as no surprise, given that Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov and US chess author Bruce Pandolfini acted as consultants for the show. While there are loud whispers that Beth Harmon is loosely based on American grandmaster Bobby Fischer, the show’s makers have billed the series as fictional.
The authenticity of the show, in terms of the game at its centre, has come in for special praise from the masters of the game. Judith Polgar, widely considered the greatest female chess player of all time, thinks that The Queen’s Gambit “can grow the game’s promotion for girls immensely. I do hope that more girls not only start [playing] it, but they will be supported by their parents and teachers and coaches, that if they are talented they can also reach their maximum potential.” US grandmaster Jennifer Shahade has said that the series “completely nailed the chess accuracy”, while reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen gave it 5 out of 6 stars.
“There are now 13 million people playing online. And then during the pandemic there was also a Netflix show about chess, The Queen’s Gambit, and that is also a bit spectacular,” Indian chess great Viswanathan Anand told AFP in a recent interview. Earlier, Anand had taken to his Instagram account to praise the show’s attention to detail in respect to every move, gripping storyline, the performance of the lead and of the supporting actors.
