Review: The Queen's Gambit (2020)

Hello everyone!

My name is Shae, I am a kinkster, and I write reviews on series and movies. I am 22 years old and live in the Netherlands. I am a student and don't have many hobbies except... Watching Netflix! I frequently recommend shows and movies to people and give my opinion on them. Kink won't play a very big part in most reviews but it is a part of me and therefore it will shine through in my opinion and perspective.

Thank you for giving me a chance by reading this, I hope you enjoy!

Mini Series review: The Queen's Gambit (2020)

Seasons: 1

Episodes: 7

Description: 

In a 1950s orphanage, a young girl reveals an astonishing talent for chess and begins an unlikely journey to stardom while grappling with addiction.

The series starts with a shocking scene, which immediately caught my attention. The scene shows a car accident, followed by the drive to the orphanage. 

In the orphanage, Beth is immediately exposed to drugs. Jolene, a girl who also lives there, tells her to take her green pills at night. This is the beginning of her addiction, at the very young age of 9 years. She learns how to play chess with the janitor, Mr. Shaibel. She turns out to be an excellent player, the drugs fuel her talent as they allow her to visualize the chess board and pieces at night and she plays entire games in her head. She grows up to become a famous chess player and creates lasting friendships on the way.

I was surprised by the effect of the drugs on the young girl. I had never even thought about the possibility of children her age taking drugs and developing addiction. Throughout the series, she keeps using them and it isn't until the very end that it becomes clear, how she is still a genius chess player even without the influence of the drugs.

Besides the big topic of substance abuse, being a woman in a man's world is a main topic. Beth constantly suffers from sexist comments, made often by her fellow chess players. The series shows, how big of a problem sexism was, and still is. Only 1% of today's Grand Masters in chess are women, according to an article I found on ScienceBlogs. Naturally, this applies to many sports and professions which are considered to be a man's sport or profession. The series raises awareness about this issue in an excellent way.

Although the series is based on a fictional book (The Queen's Gambit, by Walter Tevis), the viewer wants the story to be true. It also tricks us because of the accurate portrayal of chess, for which the novel has been praised as well. 

I very much enjoyed watching this show. I don't know much about chess but the series is made in a way, so even laypeople understand what is happening and get drawn into the tension of the various important chess matches. The different problems Beth experiences managed to get my attention and in my opinion, every single episode was interesting. The story never became boring, even though chess is elsewhere often portrayed as a boring game that only nerds play. The backstory on how Beth became an orphan is slightly predictable but not in the focus of the series, which I appreciate a lot.

What I didn't like are the loose ends, but that might be a personal thing. The viewers don't see the actual death of Beth's mother and it is not quite clear, what she is going to do after her final, very intense, chess match. 

In conclusion, I would recommend this series to anyone who wants to pay their full attention to the screen. It is not very suitable for casual watching, many meaningful details could be missed. The series is accurate and the problematics are timeless and still relevant and the general story is interesting and original.

Rating system

As a kinkster, I rate shows on a scale from Vanilla (boring, not interesting at all) to Dungeon Material (exciting and interesting).

The Queen's Gambit gets the rating Dungeon Material!

Thank you for reading!