User Reviews

I love how much the show refuses to give Ripley too many "human" moments or explicit repudiations of his behavior. It makes it so that the viewer is forced to fill in the maddeningly empty space on their own. There are so many symbols that serve as ambiguous possible keys to unlocking some kind of meaning out of all of the grisly starkness: the cat that watches without understanding, the reference to the painting where the artist is depicted both as murderer and as victim, the bloodied painting depicting a battle, and the imperious statues of gods looking down on the square.

Ultimately, any kind of external judge does not indicate whether Ripley will keep being successful or not, but our brains so desperately want there to be a light at the end of the tunnel. Some kind of better understanding of the universe while we are done. Ripley himself only gives us flickers of humanity and disconcertingly doesn't seem to often experience shame or regret. Despite this absence, the intentional coldness of Ripley keeps us in suspended animation having to fill in the gaps ourselves. We must be rid of this darkness.

Top marks to this episode. Beautifully shot, it felt incredibly bold to choose to make so many of the scenes so still and emotionally & physically contained, while emphasizing the long, arduous messiness of the murder and its clearup. The ugliness of Ripley's murders is so well done in visual, sound and moments of sheer horror - what happens in the street outside is shocking - and through all the quiet, slow, minimal action the sense of threat just went on rising and rising till my fists were literally clenched as I watched. The minute focus on details makes you so conscious of all the things that could go or are going wrong at any second. In his combination of controlled planning, instinctive reactions, sheer brazen bravado facing down people's suspicions - the number of details he can't control or forgets - Ripley is not only the light-and-shade artist-murderer signalled by Caravaggio but also the cubist image of the Picasso: all of these facets exist in him and still we can't ever be confident that we ever see such a thing as a "real" coherent version/person. Andrew Scott's performance is brilliantly effective here, in some scenes he's almost affectless with sharklike black eyes, then suddenly a shifting microexpression gives us a hint of triumph or hunger or hatred or exhaustion - I'm finding his Ripley fascinating. Watching him dial his charisma up or down depending on what Ripley wants from the person he's interacting with is chilling, as are the scenes where he's rehearsing himself, in a mirror or elsewhere. His body language as "Dickie" in his beautiful new apartment is so open and free, it's almost possible to feel he deserves the happiness he's projecting.

Can't understand why other reviewers have reacted negatively to the casting of Eliot Sumner. I (and our teenagers) found him charismatic onscreen and a convincingly dangerous sparring-partner to Ripley - and I thought the genderqueer casting (alongside of course Freddie's implied homosexuality) pointed up Ripley's internalised homophobia and discomfort beautifully. The distaste he revealed as "Dickie" describing all the things Tom didn't like about Freddie was exquisite (this scene maybe in the next episode).