The talented Mr. Ripley has returned.

In a new limited series Ripley, Andrew Scott (All of Us Strangers) plays Tom Ripley, the cunning and deadly grifter first brought to life by author Patricia Highsmith’s in The Talented Mr. Ripley, published in 1955. In the series, Ripley is a grifter who is barely scraping by in New York in the 1960s. But when a wealthy man hires Ripley to go to Italy to bring home his son, he finds himself among people who can have whatever they want, and we see Tom will do anything – be it deceit, fraud, and even murder- to stay in that world.

Dakota Fanning in Ripley. Image courtesy of Netflix.

Ripley also stars Dakota Fanning as Marge Sherwood and Johnny Flynn as Dickie Greenleaf who play the other two sides of a love triangle. The cast also includes Eliot Sumner, Maurizio Lombardi, Margherita Buy, and John Malkovich.

The eight-episode limited series was written and directed by Steven Zaillian, and the show is shot entirely in black and white, with sumptuously composed shots that would seem at home in a Hitchcock movie. Zaillian wrote the screenplays for Schindler’s List, Moneyball and American Gangster, and directed Searching for Bobby Fischer.

Ripley image courtesy of Netflix.

This is not the first production featuring Highsmith’s character; The Talented Mr. Ripley, directed by Anthony Minghella and starring Matt Damon as the title character, came out in 1999, and the book was adapted as the French film Purple Noon in 1960. Alain Delon played Ripley in that adaptation.

Ripley Under Ground was adapted into a 2005 film starring Barry Pepper, and Dennis Hopper played Ripley in The American Friend in 1977, which was an adaptation of the book Ripley’s Game. Another adaptation of that book kept the book’s title and starred John Malkovich, who has a role in the Netflix series, as Ripley.

Ripley was originally made for Showtime but moved to Netflix before Showtime was added as a Paramount+ network. The series will debut on April 4th.

Andrew Scott in Ripley. Image courtesy Netflix.