| Jimmy Kimmel |
Preliminary figures show 6.26 million broadcast viewers and more than 15m views on YouTube in first 16 hours
So much for low viewership: Jimmy Kimmel’s comeback monologue is now his most-viewed one on YouTube.
In Swedish film-maker Ninja Thyberg’s strong debut, a young woman discovers a difficult, male-dominated industry as she strives for agency
Adrian HortonThe observational eye of Pleasure, an ambitious Sundance debut by the Swedish film-maker Ninja Thyberg, is so transactional, at once unsparing and recessive, that one might mistake the first 10 minutes of this drama on the American adult film business for a documentary. “Business or pleasure?” the customs agent asks 19-year-old Swedish visitor Bella Cherry as she enters the country with a dream to become a porn star. She answers, vacantly, “Pleasure,” but the film’s opening moments are all business: a full frontal, zoomed-in shot of Bella’s delicate balancing act in the shower as she shaves her vulva for a shoot; Bella affirming her birthdate (1999), agreed-upon pay ($900 for playing innocent virgin in girl-guy porn), and consent to perform a sexually explicit act for a contract; the bright lighting of professional shoots; crew-members’ playful teasing when Bella, a first-time performer, is confused by the use of a douche.
The glossy series on an orphaned girl’s inexorable rise to chess stardom is now the streamer’s most-watched scripted limited series of all time
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And yet, as of this week The Queen’s Gambit is Netflix’s most-watched scripted limited series to date – a slightly convoluted and dubious record, given that Netflix measures a “view” as anything more than two minutes of content, but still, attracting 62 million account viewers during its first month is an impressive feat. (For comparison, Tiger King, the docuseries on America’s private exotic zoos that blew up at the outset of quarantine, drew 64 million account viewers in its first month.)
How to explain the surprising dominance of a period miniseries about one girl’s inexorable rise to the heights of international chess prestige? For anyone who’s fallen into it – and with the entire show released at once mere weeks before a bruising and protracted US election, The Queen’s Gambit was ripe binge material – the answer is in the immersion. The Queen’s Gambit is grade-A escapism: a classic sports underdog story injected with Netflix capital, an uncomplicated pleasure of sumptuous, meticulous styling, a soothing portal into another world which believes in talent as the one invincible currency.
The Queen’s Gambit plays, especially in its early episodes, as a matured rendition of classic, beloved Roald Dahl coming-of-age stories. Orphaned at age nine by a car crash, Beth Harmon (played in the first episode by Isla Johnston) is sent to the barren Methuen Home for Girls in Kentucky; lonely save for one fellow orphan, Jolene (Moses Ingraham), and plied with tranquilizers, Beth hides out in a dingy basement and befriends the gruff janitor Mr Shaibel (Bill Camp), who introduces her to chess. Her prodigious skill is undeniable, her consumption by chess whole – by day, she schools Mr Shaibel, inhaling lessons echoed throughout the rest of the series; by night, she envisions boards and maneuvers upside-down on the ceiling, her mind an endlessly capable expanse.