Here he is, then: every ounce of his talent, ineffable charm and lightly reptilian hotness on display. Andrew Scott steps up to play Patricia Highsmith’s titular antihero in Netflix’s eight-part adaptation of The Talented Mr Ripley (the first volume of a series of pulpy novels now known as the “Ripliad”).
When we first meet him, Tom Ripley is living in a borderline flophouse in New York and scratching an inelegant living as a petty, white-collar criminal; diverting people’s post and cheques, and running fake debt collection agencies. But you can’t keep a bad man – or a good fraudster – down for long. When Dickie Greenleaf’s father offers him the job (the only one of Dickie’s friends who will entertain the idea) of heading out on an all-expenses paid trip to Italy to try to persuade his son (played by Johnny Flynn) to give up his wastrel life in Europe and come home, he grabs the opportunity. By which I mean: runs with it clutched to his chest with both hands, as far as it will take him.
