Veron The Reviewer

The Queen's Gambit  stars Anya Taylor-Joy (best known for The Witch , Split , and Glass) as Beth Harmon, a gifted chess prodigy who began her journey playing chess with an old janitor in the basement of her orphanage. Throughout the series, she meets various other chess players and faces off against them in chess games that are often touched upon, but her struggles against other masterful players are largely a backdrop for her true struggle, with addiction and the pursuit of risks to cope with loss. The acting is impeccable. Taylor-Joy's performance as the often-arrogant but ultimately deeply insecure Beth Harmon is absolutely mesmerizing to watch. Her facial expressions also make it clear to the viewer her current state of mind, mood, and thought process. She imbues the character with an almost casual understanding of how good she is at chess, occasionally bordering on haughtiness, yet her clear flaws and vulnerabilities shine through enough that she is still very likable. The...

You  is a psychological thriller series on Netflix, centering on obsessive stalker and bookstore manager Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) and his attempts to manipulate the people around him in order to "win" the affections of someone he is currently stalking and obsessed with. In Season 1, his target was literary graduate student and aspiring writer Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail), while in Season 2 he focused on chef Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti). The plots of each season revolve around the relationships between Joe, his target, and their various friends and acquaintances. While Joe is undeniably an obsessive creep and stalker stopping at nothing to make his targets fall in love with him, his nice and good-looking facade and sardonic voiceover narration creates a lot of sympathy for him as he accurately takes apart the flaws of those around him, even as he shows himself to be as horrible as the others he despises. Almost every major character is greatly flawed, and the way thos...