There's a reason this TV adaptation is titled Ripley and not The Talented Mr Ripley. Or even, as another producer might have styled it: Patricia Highsmith's Mr Ripley. And that's because - although plot-wise this TV version stays much closer to the book than the 1999 movie - this is not Patricia Highsmith's Ripley. It is very much Steven Zaillian's Ripley. And, as such, it is first and foremost a director's exercise in film noir. So far as that goes, it is an exceptioinally stylish and moody recreation of noir. But while Highsmith's characters and story certainly lend themselves to a more broody treatment, Zaillian hasn't necessarily done Highsmith any favours in the scripting. The three main characters all become somewhat flat, and often more arch than real. Casting Tom with an older actor renders the character something of a seedy and desperate loser; it's not so easy to admire is ingenuity, or forgive his avarice. By contrast, the movie version is sexy and glamorous, and positively bursting with energy and passion. You instantly get why Marge loves Jude Law's Dicky, and why Tom wants to be him. Johnny Flynn? Not so much. Also, whjile Zaillian is all about maintaining the tension and the suspense, he also makes some choices that seriously undermine any plot credibility. It's bad enough that the police apparently fail to ever obtain a phot of the real Richard Greenleaf. But Zaillian has Marge sell her story to TWO Italian publications, who both choose to run stories about the Greenleaf disappearance with a selection of Marge's photographs - but not a single one of Richard. As if. Ultimately, Zaillian's focus on the intense press coverage of the case proves his undoing. Are we really supposed to believe that none of Italy's newspapers ever thought to obtain a photo of Richard Greenleaf from his parents, or his Princeton friends, or a college year book? Overall, while I enjoyed Andrew Scott's Ripley, Matt Damon's movie version is more engaging, more complex and more moving. Damon's Mr Ripley is genuinely *talented* and you're ultimately touched by his yearning and his despair. Scott's Ripley is, in fact, not talented at all; he mostly outsmarts himself, he's creepy as hell, and you mostly think he deserves to be caught. Which makes him not half as much fun as Highsmith intended.
