Why is there such a buzz about ...?

The Queen’s Gambit (Netflix)

Who really wants to watch a drama about chess, eh? Everyone, it seems. This seven-part mini-series has been sitting in Netflix’s top ten for weeks, with award buzz building steadily around its star, Anya Taylor-Joy (right), for her turn as a troubled American chess prodigy growing up orphaned in the 1960s.

The real trick to its success is that The Queen’s Gambit isn’t really about chess at all. It takes the game and then filters it brilliantly through the adrenaline-fuelled sieve of sports movies, before marrying it to the period panache of Mad Men, to end up with a show that’s as visually stylish as it is smart, as slyly funny as it is bruisingly heartfelt.

Its chess sequences feel icily authentic (and surprisingly exciting), but it doesn’t matter if your grasp of the game stops at the fact that the little horsey one moves in a zigzag. This is at heart an irresistible human story, and Taylor-Joy is a revelation as the lithe, unhinged grandmaster teetering on the edge of selfdestruction due to booze and pills, but still somehow managing to pull herself together enough to challenge chess’s old boys’ club at its own game.

Director and writer Scott Frank clearly loves the original novel by Walter Tevis (The Man Who Fell To Earth and The Color Of Money). This is remarkably faithful to the original, while somehow still feeling sharp and modern.

A fantastic series, almost flawless from opening gambit to aching endgame. Check and mate.