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.

Andrew Scott as Tom Ripley. Picture: Netflix

That’s fine, but it doesn’t give us a character to love or hate. In the movie version, 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.

It takes way too long for the meat of the story to emerge. Ripley is hired by a man whose son, Dickie Greenleaf, is living too much of the dolce vita in a town near Naples. So off to Italy Ripley goes and walks up to Dickie and his girlfriend Marge on the beach, pretending to know Dickie from New York. There is some awkwardness, but Dickie shows the generosity you’d expect while spending someone else’s money. And then the first episode ends, with Ripley practising to be Dickie Greenleaf in the mirror.

It was all very “meh”, not least because they chose to shoot the whole thing in black and white. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know that it’s beautiful bleached sunlight and turquoise sea, with Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow gleaming as Dickie and Marge. Johnny Flynn and Dakota Fanning play the parts here and they don’t convince. The whole point is that Ripley wants to take over Dickie’s magnificent life. It looks a bit dull here, I can’t see why he’d be bothered.

Dakota Fanning as Marge Sherwood, Johnny Flynn as Dickie Greenleaf and Andrew Scott as Tom Ripley. Picture: Netflix

Ripley is more style than substance, so it’s all the shadows and dimly lit railway under-passes you’d expect in a noir thriller from the 1930s. That’s grand when something happens, not so good when the scenes are thrown in for mood. Scott is a great actor, but he’s not given enough to do, at least not in the first episode.

I’ll keep watching because the trailer promises more and I love a bit of noir. But they could have made this first episode sing. And they didn’t.