Byte-Sized Overview
Ripley is a gorgeously austere psychological thriller built around Tom Ripley, a small-time grifter in early 1960s New York who is handed an apparently simple job: travel to Italy and persuade a wealthy shipping magnate’s wayward son, Dickie Greenleaf, to come home. That premise quickly curdles into something nastier, stranger and far more elegant, as Tom becomes infatuated with the life Dickie has, then determined to possess it in any way he can. Andrew Scott plays Tom with the sort of quiet, slippery intelligence that makes every smile feel like a threat in waiting. Dakota Fanning’s Marge Sherwood adds the wary conscience of the piece, while Johnny Flynn gives Dickie the easy charm that Tom can admire and envy in equal measure.
What makes this one worth a look is its discipline. Instead of chasing thrills with noisy plot gymnastics, it leans into patience, visual precision and the awful fascination of watching a man improvise his way through disaster. It is stylish, often cold, occasionally funny in a grim little way, and far more interested in unease than spectacle. If you like your drama elegant, poisonous and morally compromised, this is catnip.
Transmission Details
- Show Title: Ripley
- Years: 2024
- Created By: Steven Zaillian
- Network: Netflix
- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 8
- Starring: Andrew Scott, Dakota Fanning, Johnny Flynn
- Supporting Cast: Eliot Sumner, Maurizio Lombardi, Margherita Buy, John Malkovich, Kenneth Lonergan, Ann Cusack, Bokeem Woodbine, Vittorio Viviani, Louis Hofmann
- Genres: Psychological thriller, crime drama, mystery, period drama
- Status: Limited series, ended
Signal Strength
Ripley is at its best when it trusts stillness. Steven Zaillian writes and directs with a severe confidence that lets gesture do the heavy lifting. A lifted eyebrow, a delayed answer, a look held one beat too long all carry the weight of a gunshot. That approach suits the material beautifully, because Tom Ripley is a character who survives by reading rooms better than anyone else in them. Andrew Scott understands that instinct perfectly. His performance is not merely slippery, it is metabolically slippery, always recalculating what the room wants from him.
The series also knows how to make beauty feel sinister. The black-and-white photography turns Italy into a place of dazzling surfaces and hidden rot. The coastal settings, the interiors and the careful framing all suggest a postcard that has somehow learned to stare back. When the show moves, it does so with purpose. It is never in a hurry, but it is always arranging pressure points.
Where it loses momentum is in the same place it finds its style: austerity can become a little airless. The pace occasionally asks for more patience than some viewers will happily give, and a few supporting strands function more as atmospheric circuitry than fully beating subplots. Still, the performances are strong enough to keep the machine humming, especially when Tom is forced to improvise under scrutiny.
Vibe Check
This is a slow-burn series for viewers who enjoy tension that accumulates by inches rather than episodes that end in fireworks. It is cool, controlled and more than a little unsettling. There is crime, but it is the sort of crime that unfolds through social manoeuvring, forgery, misdirection and emotional vacancy rather than constant action. The thrill comes from watching Tom’s lies multiply and from noticing how often he nearly gets away with them.
Fans of brooding prestige drama, classic psychological suspense and character studies with a nasty centre should be very happy here. If you want chase scenes, broad melodrama or a brisk “one more episode” engine, you may find the show too composed for its own good. If you like series that feel as if they have been cut from marble, with just enough blood on the chisel to be interesting, this is exactly your sort of thing.
Spoiler Mode
Ripley follows Tom from petty fraud and shabby survival in New York to full-blown identity theft in Italy, but the series is really about the slow corrosion of his sense of self. The job that gets him to Europe is simple enough on paper: approach Dickie Greenleaf and persuade him to return to his father’s orbit. Tom instead becomes obsessed with Dickie’s moneyed ease, his leisure and his life in the sun. That obsession is not romantic so much as parasitic. Tom wants proximity first, then ownership, then replacement. The show makes each step feel disturbingly logical.
Once Tom is embedded in Dickie’s circle, the central triangle with Marge becomes the series’ most dangerous engine. Marge sees more than Tom would like, and Dakota Fanning plays her as observant without turning her into a mere obstacle. Dickie, for his part, is drawn to Tom’s usefulness and his odd intensity, but he never truly understands what he has invited into his villa and his life. The series keeps tightening the screws until Tom’s envy turns fatal. Dickie’s death, and Tom’s decision to take over his identity, is the point at which the story fully commits to the horror of self-invention.
From there, the series becomes a study in double lives and improvisation. Tom’s impersonation of Dickie is not a simple disguise, but a sustained act of social forgery, complete with altered mannerisms, forged assumptions and a constantly shifting script. Inspector Pietro Ravini begins to circle the case, bringing a professional scepticism that threatens Tom’s carefully maintained fiction. Freddie Miles, one of the more caustic presences in the story, sharpens the pressure around Tom by sensing that something is off long before anyone can prove it.
By the end of the released run, Tom has not become safe, only more resourceful. The final stretch leaves him with a version of success that feels inseparable from isolation. He has gained mobility, wealth and an identity he has stolen, but every layer of his victory depends on deception, murder and the hope that no one will connect the dots. The closing movement is not about redemption or punishment so much as endurance: Tom keeps surviving by becoming harder to read, which is both the achievement and the sickness of the piece. The series ends with the unsettling suggestion that, for Ripley, evasion is not a tactic. It is the whole personality.
Character Shout-Outs
Tom Ripley, played by Andrew Scott, is the whole show’s secret weapon. Scott makes Tom simultaneously magnetic, pathetic, observant and terrifying, often within the same scene. He never overplays the villainy, which is precisely why the performance works; you can see how Tom might persuade himself that he is merely adapting. That little self-deception is the rot at the centre of everything.
Marge Sherwood, played by Dakota Fanning, gives the series its most important counterweight. She is intelligent, careful and increasingly alert to the fact that Tom is not quite what he seems. Fanning resists any temptation to make Marge either brittle or saintly. Instead, she plays her as someone trying to reason with a world that has already begun to shift under her feet, which makes her one of the show’s most grounded presences.
Dickie Greenleaf, played by Johnny Flynn, is the life Tom wants to borrow and then steal. Flynn gives him charm without making him bland, and ease without making him shallow. The performance matters because Dickie has to be appealing enough for Tom’s envy to make sense, but not so angelic that the character turns into a saintly prize. Flynn keeps him maddeningly human.
Inspector Pietro Ravini, played by Maurizio Lombardi, brings patient menace to the investigation. He is less interested in drama than in facts, which makes him a quiet threat to Tom’s elaborate fictions. Lombardi’s performance is all restrained gravity, and the series benefits enormously from that steadiness.
Freddie Miles, played by Eliot Sumner, adds a nasty, brittle edge whenever the story needs a social irritant who can also smell a lie. Sumner plays Freddie with a sharpness that makes every interaction feel a touch more combustible. The character is not there to be liked, and that is a relief.
Deep Dive Highlights
Ripley is adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, but Steven Zaillian’s version feels less like a glossy literary costume piece and more like a piece of controlled visual design. The decision to shoot the series in black and white is not just an aesthetic flourish. It strips the world of decorative warmth and turns every surface into an argument about contrast, concealment and moral blankness. It also gives the Italian locations a strange time-slip quality, as if the whole story has been drained into memory before it has fully happened.
The production is impressively committed to detail. Filming took place on location across Italy, including Venice, Rome, Naples, Palermo and the Amalfi Coast, with Atrani standing in for the Greenleafs’ sun-drenched hideaway. That choice matters because the town’s tight streets and vertical geography help the show feel enclosed, despite the open air and the sea. The sense of being watched, or of not being able to escape your own choices, is built into the landscape.
The series also benefits from a production design approach that treats surfaces as evidence. Reported behind-the-scenes work included more than 200 sets and locations, all arranged to support a 1960s world that feels lived in rather than merely dressed. Robert Elswit’s cinematography, paired with Zaillian’s disciplined direction, gives the show its severe elegance. It is a rare case where the craft is not just beautiful but morally expressive. Even the beauty feels complicit.
Legacy & Impact
Ripley arrived as a prestige limited series rather than a long-running franchise piece, and that has shaped its place in television history. It is already notable for being a handsome, unusually severe adaptation of Highsmith’s work, and for foregrounding mood, texture and performance over speed. It also made a strong awards-season showing, with major recognition for its lead performance and craft. That matters because it confirms the obvious: this was not just a stylish curiosity, but a serious piece of television that landed with critics and voters alike.
Its broader impact is likely to be felt more in the way viewers and makers think about literary adaptation than in any direct wave of imitators. The show demonstrates that a thriller can be compelling without being frantic, and that a famous story can be freshly unnerving if it is treated with enough visual conviction and psychological discipline. In an age of increasingly noisy prestige crime dramas, Ripley has the faintly perverse distinction of making restraint feel radical.
Skull Face’s Take
Watch Ripley if you like elegant, unsettling drama driven by a superb central performance and a wonderfully poisonous sense of atmosphere. Skip it if you need speed, warmth or a clear emotional safety rail. It is slow, chilly and exquisitely made, which is either your idea of a good time or an extremely stylish punishment.
Skull Face's Score
Skull Face's independent editorial rating
An elegant and unnerving psychological thriller anchored by a superb lead performance.
What works
- Andrew Scott is mesmerising as Tom Ripley
- Stunning black-and-white cinematography and production design
- Strong control of mood and tension
What may not
- Deliberate pacing may feel too restrained for some viewers
- A few supporting threads are more atmospheric than gripping