9 year old Elizabeth Harmon (Isla Johnston) finds herself at an orphanage following her mother's apparent suicide. If there is the kind of horrific abuse orphanages are often characterized by in movies, none is shown. With one significant exception - kids are given tranquilizers daily "for disposition". Once, sent on an errand to the basement Elizabeth observes the custodian Mr. Shaibel (Bill Camp) playing chess by himself. Intrigued, she insists that he teaches her. Between her brilliant mind, probably inherited from her math professor mother, and tranquilizer induced half imagining, half hallucinating a chessboard on the ceiling, she quickly surpasses her teacher. The chessboard on the ceiling is a stunning visual and a clever way to bring what usually happens inside a head out onto the screen. It is truly remarkable how the series managed to make chess games exciting, even as they were impossible to follow, at least for me. But The Queen's Gambit really rests on the shoulders of its young star Anya Taylor Joy. Equally authentic as a gawky, maladjusted teenager and a polished fashionista, she is absolutely brilliant at expressing the huge range of emotions Elizabeth goes through. All while managing to portray her as someone not outwardly emotional. There is a slew of wonderful supporting characters and Elizabeth's interactions with them take delightfully unexpected turns. My favorite example was her relationship with her adoptive mother Alma (Marielle Heller). Alma may have taken the girl out of the orphanage and into a nice suburban house, but as time goes on, the dynamics of who is saving whom evolve.

Towards the end though The Queen's Gambit succumbs to the typical Hollywood "triumph over adversity" story it is at its core. It's disappointing because there were so many seeds of complexity planted throughout much of the show and they never bear fruit. All the talk of the genius and madness being two sides of the same coin, of her mother's mental illness, of anger Elizabeth was supposedly holding inside - there had to be something given terrible trauma she had been through. But all we get is a garden variety alcohol abuse and some intermittent pill addiction from back at the orphanage. Another wonderful seed that got abandoned was the question Elizabeth posed to her young and ambitious Soviet opponent (Louis Ashbourne Serkis), "You'll become a World Champion at 16. Then what?" Seriously, what then? Season 2, perhaps?