TV review: I'll keep watching Ripley, even if Andrew Scott isn't given enough to do 

In The Talented Mr Ripley, Matt Damon came across naive and nice, keeping the monster under wraps so it has more impact when it’s revealed. In Ripley, Scott has him as a bad ‘un from the get go

Andrew Scott is a great actor, Pat Fitzpatrick writes, but episode one doesn't sing

The trailer for Ripley (Netflix) is brilliant. It’s black and white and moody, ‘The Great Pretender’ playing in the background, Andrew Scott dripping with menace as trickster Tom Ripley, who inveigles his way into Dickie Greenleaf’s life in 1950s Italy, apparently murders someone and ends up cat-and-mouse with a local detective sporting an elegant moustache.

The problem is, the first episode isn’t nearly as good. It pulls the “look what happens” trick at the start as Ripley pulls a corpse down a staircase, after which the narrative goes back six months and almost goes to sleep. Or at least I nearly fell asleep as we watch Ripley’s conman life in New York City, everything slow and precise. Scott plays him here as inscrutable, with numerous faces, depending on the job.