At a time when programme makers seem not to place much value on original ideas or innovation, it is inevitable that audiences are being offered a heavy “remake” diet. Fancy a pap-for-pap shot retelling of the Amy Winehouse story, with added karaoke? Or a film recounting the Prince Andrew Newsnight interview that “shook the world”? Both things are playing right now.
Netflix’s Scoop, in which the roles of news broadcaster Emily Maitlis and “Randy Andy” are played by Gillian Anderson and Rufus Sewell, offers a near recreation of the 2019 BBC interview. It’s baffling to watch a film about the relevance of the public broadcast service produced by the subscriber-funded disrupter whose role in the cultural discourse has been to undermine its power. I still cannot quite fathom why Netflix made it. Nor what it was supposed to say. Still — did you see how attentively they did Gill’s make-up? And what about Billie Piper’s white-bleached perm?
Tom Ripley, Patricia Highsmith’s amoral conman, should be persuasive in any guise. The ultimate cipher, the fraudster and then serial killer of five novels, he is a canvas on which one can project all sorts of moods. He made his screen debut via Alain Delon in Plein Soleil in 1960, only five years after he first appeared in print. Delon’s characterisation leaned towards the sinewy charisma of that era, the embodiment of masculine desire.