The Queen’s Gambit has very few sex scenes and no nudity, focusing instead on the steamy thrill of intellectual pursuit. It turns out that you can have a smash hit without all the smashing.
On paper, Netflix’s series wouldn’t appear to promise fireworks in the first place. In the unlikely event that posts about the show are not already proliferating wildly on your Facebook feed, The Queen’s Gambit is in 1960s Kentucky—with jumps to New York, Paris, Mexico City, and Moscow. It concerns the coming of age of Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy), a chess wunderkind with an unnerving stillness and a predilection for tranquilizers. Orphaned by suicide, troubled by addiction, deprived not just of wealth or resources, but also any sense of stability or basic human affection—this is a tale of a young girl’s deprivation and loss.
And yet, The Queen’s Gambit masterfully teases our own need as viewers to see Beth Harmon climb out of that dark well and succeed with her gift, juggling those heavy layers with the same ease that Harmon runs the chessboard. It also manages to infuse this arc with a sensuality that not only buffers against that darkness, but in part, illuminates the way out. By the time we meet Harmon as a young woman scaling her way up the chess rankings in a local tournament, the roaring fire of the show is lit and starting to crackle. We yearn right there alongside her to have our bones warmed by her experiences and wins.
In the second episode, The Queen’s Gambit really starts to quicken the blood. It’s not so much the moment when Harmon spies on fellow students groping in the library stacks, though that’s proof of her own burgeoning curiosity about sex. It’s when she starts to actively compete.
Chess may seem dull and buttoned-up to most people. But in the hands of The Queen’s Gambit, it looks a lot like foreplay. Two strangers sit incredibly close yet silent, gazing intently to read each other, to inquire, to intimidate. There’s a great deal of masked nervousness and controlled fluster. Chess pieces are held, considered, moved tentatively or aggressively, their rhythms matching the speed of the brain commanding them. The way these matches are shot—through faces, posturing, and lingering—feels shockingly intimate. The constant shifting from locked gazes to averted eyes feels almost voyeuristic to intrude upon.
The power of all this has everything to do with Taylor-Joy’s self-possession, which has a deer-like speed, grace and innocence, only led by darting shark eyes. As Beth Harmon, the lone female outlier in a sea of men, as approaches each new opponent, she treats them as a conquest to relish, with wit to match. When it’s clear that Beth is beating Townes (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) in episode two, for instance, he flirts his way through his demise. “Jesus Christ, Harmon, you’re humiliating my rook,” he protests. To which she winks back, “You won’t suffer much longer.” The show is full of these innuendo-laden tête-à-têtes, made visually exciting by the elegant costuming and the luxury hotels with their grand, winding staircases.
It’s not that The Queen’s Gambit is bereft of actual sex. It’s more that its sexiness is a mood, a vibe, a hunger, so when it’s directly deployed, it’s often the least sexy thing about the scene. In an early episode, Harmon has her first sexual experience with a fellow from her Russian lessons, who finds chess too cerebral even though learning Russian to read Dostoevsky in the original. It’s an encounter that’s appropriately disappointing given their age, with him fumbling on top of her, and her asking if he’s close to finishing. The only real finish, though, is her awkward pat on his shoulder.
Or take the moment in episode five when Harry Beltik (Harry Melling) visits Beth to help her improve her game after a loss to Borgov (Marcin Dorociński). He kisses her abruptly, but she freezes, furrowing her brow, leading him to apologize. “No, no,” she says. “I wasn’t ready.” She takes a beat, as if to mentally allow for sexual possibility, then adds, “I’m ready now.” Next, we cut to the two of them in bed, but instead of postcoital sweet nothings, Harmon simply lights a cigarette and escapes into a chess book. Beltik, confused, asks if he should stay there with her or go back to his room. “Whatever you want,” she answers nonchalantly, without looking up, and means it.