Aw crap. Thereās a Dead RingersĀ TV series now.
On the one hand, itās a series version of one of my favorite David Cronenberg movies, which featured one of my all-time favorite Jeremy Irons performances. Add that to it being a reboot, or a remake, or what-have-you, and themās some hurdles to clear.
On the other hand, it stars Rachel Weisz, who now only I love seeing but is one of my favorite actresses to play people who are just slightly off.
(See: Complete Unknown)
Sigh.
Iāll roll the dice on this one.
I gave it two episodes.
Rachel Weisz does her best with what on-the-nose try-hard schlockier-than-thou eat-the-entitled-megarich cartoonish writing she is given but, good as she is, sheās not enough to hold me.
The writing? There is nothing that the writing canāt feel it needs to make more obvious.
Itās not enough that Elliot is the more verbal of the two, wearing her hair flowing loose while Beverlyās is neatly split down the middle and tied behind her head - we also need a character spelling out āyouāre into the whole delayed gratification thingā, sandwiched in scenes of Elliotās coke-fueled bathroom stall one-night stands, and a bit where she crawls her way through a kitchen counter in all fours, stuffing food in her mouth.
Itās not enough that her main lead for an investor is a woman whose family caused the opioid epidemic - her advisor board has to have a cultish following of absurd health trends, including trepanation.
And why is this mega-rich asshole that neither of them likes their sole investment lifeline for the center? The twins are based in Manhattan, are admittedly famous in the city, and live in a spectacular flat that has to be worth at least half what they are looking to raise - surely there must be other investors in their circle who arenāt walking caricatures?
TV series have one advantage over movies: time. You donāt need to compress everything into a couple of hours. You can use that time to grow your characters, to provide nuance, to make sure we know them.
That would allow us to spend more time looking at the dynamics of the Mantle twin relationship, instead of having to settle for something thatās slathered on with a paint roller so the writers can lock us up again in the anti-asshole-billionaire strawman argument echo chamber.
Instead these two episodes choose to spell everything out for us and reduce the twins to a difference in sexual orientation, moral compass, and hairdo; all so we can spend more time with idiots who arenāt the point.


















