The Man Who Fell to Earth 1.1: Great Provenance and Excellent Start

The Man Who Fell to Earth, which debuted tonight on Showtime as a ten-episode television series, has a long and distinguished history.  The novel of the same name by Walter Tevis was published in 1963 to critical acclaim.  I didn't read it, because I had switched as a teenager by then from science fiction to rock music as my passion, and didn't go back to science fiction until a few decades years later -- Philip K. Dick's 1962 The Man in the High Castle had made it just under wire.  Meanwhile, The Man Who Fell to Earth was made into 1976 movie starring David Bowie which I saw and loved, and which also received critical acclaim.  A 1987 made-for-television movie followed, which I'm pretty sure I didn't see, and certainly can't remember.  A now this new Showtime series.

I just saw the first episode and really liked it.  In addition to the multiple provenance of the story from the novel, this new series also has echoes of the superb 1984 movie Starman starring Jeff Bridges and the also superb movie, also from 1984, The Brother from Another Planet starring Joe Morton.  So, to be clear, saying that the first episode of this new series is reminiscent of those two great movies is high praise indeed. Both movies have lots of humor, poking fun at the mores of the day, and the new Man Who Fell to Earth looks to have plenty of the same.  Both movies also have some serious punchlines, and it looks like the new series has those, too.  And, like The Brother from Another Planet, this Man Who Fell to Earth is Black, and his initiation into the culture of our planet will be mainly through people of color in the United States.

Like all of these other narratives, this visitor from a distant planet is both very bright and mostly clueless about our customs here on Earth.  We may or may not find out the reason for this cluelessness during the series -- usually, it's some variation of the crisis was so severe on that planet far out into space, that the visitor and/or his people didn't have time to properly research us.  (If the scientists on this other planet had submitted their plan for Earth to an academic journal, it would probably wouldn't have passed peer review.) The new series begins with the visitor addressing an assembled group of dignitaries or whomever, speaking in perfect English, strutting around like some kind of combination of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, with flashbacks to the time he first got here.  I think this kind of flashback approach is overdone in narratives these days, and the story would have been better off if told in real sequence, but that's ok.

I thought Chiwetel Ejiofor was excellent as the man who fell, as was Naomie Harris as the woman who reluctantly helps him but you know that will be much more, and it's too soon to tell about everyone else. But I'll definitely be back here next week and after to tell you what I think of the ensuing episodes.

first spaceship to Alpha Centauri from Mars

The Queen's Gambit: Will Check Your Attention and Keep It for a Long Time

If you'd like your soul lifted, refreshed, and recharged for a long time, check out The Queen's Gambit, a seven-episode mini-series, on Netflix.  Its story of Beth Harmon, a fictitious child chess prodigy who grows into a flawed but splendid champion, shines on so many levels.

The closest analog in real life is Bobby Fischer, an American child chess prodigy who went on to become World Chess Champion in 1972 by beating Boris Spassky, who held that title and represented the Soviet Union.  Fisher's career went downhill after that, and The Queen's Gambit ends right after Harmon gains that victory, so there the similarity ends.  But we're left with an extraordinary set of scenes and relationships.

Among my favorites -

• Beth with Mr. Shabel, a janitor in the orphanage who recognizes Beth's talent and teaches her chess
• Beth with the variety of boys and young men she usually beats in matches, and can't quite connect with or fall in love with.
• Beth with her adoptive mother, who comes to deeply believe in her.
• Beth in the Soviet Union, where she meets and bests a whole new series of masters and near-masters
• Beth and Jolene, a friend at the orphanage, who turns out to be quite a friend indeed

As this list which I could go on with indicates, Beth is the centerpiece of just about every scene in the mini-series.  And Anya Taylor-Joy delivers this role memorably, animating a character who ranges from almost autistic at the beginning to alcoholic and almost serenely triumphant at the end.   Same for all the other characters - memorably performed that is - ranging from those chess boys young and old, to the pharmacist with whom Beth has her own unique relationship.  Come to think of it, she has a unique relationship with just about each and every character in this narrative.

One of the main reasons The Queen's Gambit is so good is precisely because it comes from a novel, not real life, which all too often is not quite as incredible as the story told here.  And, though I haven't yet read the Walter Tevis novel of the same name from which the mini-series is derived, I see on Wikipedia that he authored six novels before he died in 1984 at way too young an age, and three of them, including The Hustler, were made into movies before The Queen's Gambit.  

All of which adds up to a real phenomenon on our hands, and cause for a big round of applause for everyone concerned, including Netflix for getting it on our televisions, computer screens, and phones.