On October 23, 2020, Netflix released one of its most compelling and successful original TV shows to date with The Queen’s Gambit. Starring Anya Taylor-Joy in the leading role, the series perfectly blended being a sports drama with a coming-of-age story all wrapped up into one. Plus, with the timing of the release being in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the series’ success was perhaps more than even Netflix expected.
But, of course, it was just timing that worked in the series’ favor. With an impressive 96% on Rotten Tomatoes from critics, and 94% from the public, the series proved that a well-produced, sharply written, and fast-paced miniseries can be a force to be reckoned with in streaming. After all, while a show with multiple seasons can have viewers locked in for weeks at a time, a seven-episode series like The Queen’s Gambit was just as binge-worthy, but still managed to expertly wrap up all the storylines by the end.
‘The Queen’s Gambit’ Reached 62 Million Views in the First Month
After its release, The Queen’s Gambit broke a few streaming records. According to Netflix, the series garnered a whopping 62 million views during the first 28 days, and set the record for the most-watched scripted limited series to date. Per Variety, however, the number is a tad misleading. The outlet states that while 62 million viewers did tune it, the number is based on the number of viewers who have watched at least two minutes of a piece of content, which is different from how the rest of the TV industry measures audiences. Nevertheless, the series did become a streaming hit.
The Queen’s Gambit went on to reach the Top 10 in 92 countries and ranked No. 1 in 63 countries, including the U.K., Argentina, Israel and South Africa. Plus, global interest in chess as a whole also went up. Per Netflix, Google search queries for chess doubled, searches for “how to play chess” hit a nine-year peak, inquiries for ‘chess sets’ on eBay were up by 250% and the number of new players increased five-fold on Chess.com. Interest in the original book that inspired the series, Walter Tevis’ 1983 novel by the same name, also grew exponentially and made it a New York Times bestseller 37 years after its release.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz
Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie?
Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
FIND YOUR FILM →
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want?
The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
ASomething that pulls the rug out — that makes me think I’m watching one kind of film and then reveals I’m watching another entirely.
BSomething overwhelming — funny, sad, absurd, and genuinely moving, all at once.
CSomething grand and weighty — a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I’m watching.
DSomething formally daring — a film that pushes what cinema can even do.
ESomething lean and relentless — pure tension with no wasted frame.
NEXT QUESTION →
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film?
Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
AClass, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity.
BIdentity, family, and the chaos of trying to hold your life together when everything is falling apart.
CGenius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back.
DEgo, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you’re still alive to watch it happen.
EEvil, chance, and whether moral order actually exists or if we just tell ourselves it does.
NEXT QUESTION →
03
How do you like your story told?
Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
AGenre-twisting — I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different.
BMaximalist and genre-blending — comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, all in one ride.
CEpic and non-linear — cutting between timelines, building a mosaic of cause and consequence.
DA single unbroken flow — I want to feel like I’m living it in real time, no cuts to safety.
ESpare and precise — every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more.
NEXT QUESTION →
04
What makes a truly great antagonist?
The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
AA system — invisible, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face.
BThe self — the ways we sabotage, abandon, and fail the people we love most.
CHistory — the unstoppable momentum of events that no single person can stop or redirect.
DThe industry — the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance.
EPure, implacable evil — a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical.
NEXT QUESTION →
05
What do you want from a film’s ending?
The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
AShock and inevitability — a conclusion that recontextualises everything that came before it.
BEarned emotion — I want to cry, laugh, and feel genuinely hopeful, even if the world is a mess.
CDevastation and grandeur — an ending that makes me sit in silence for a few minutes after.
DAmbiguity — something that leaves enough open that I’m still thinking about it days later.
EBleakness — an honest refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it actually is.
NEXT QUESTION →
06
Which setting pulls you in most?
Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
AA gleaming modern city with a hidden underside — beauty masking rot, wealth masking desperation.
BA collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite — the multiverse of a single ordinary person.
CThe corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point — where decisions echo for decades.
DThe grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood — fame as both destination and trap.
EVast, indifferent landscape — desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason.
NEXT QUESTION →
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most?
Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
AProduction design and mise-en-scène — every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface.
BEditing and tonal control — the ability to move between registers without losing the audience.
CScore and sound design — music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you’re watching.
DCinematography as performance — the camera not recording events but participating in them.
ESilence and restraint — what’s left unsaid and unshown doing more work than any dialogue could.
NEXT QUESTION →
08
What kind of main character do you root for?
The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
ASomeone smart and resourceful who makes increasingly dangerous decisions under pressure.
BSomeone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary.
CA brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws are inseparable from each other.
DA self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing.
EA quiet, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense.
NEXT QUESTION →
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time?
Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
AI love a slow build when I know the payoff is going to be seismic — patience for a devastating reveal.
BGive me relentless momentum — I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end.
CEpic runtime doesn’t scare me — if the material demands three hours, give me three hours.
DI want it to feel propulsive even when nothing is technically happening — restless energy throughout.
EDeliberate and unhurried — I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action.
NEXT QUESTION →
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema?
The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
AUnsettled — like I’ve just seen something I can’t fully explain but can’t stop thinking about.
BMoved and energised — like the film reminded me what actually matters and gave me something to hold onto.
CHumbled — like I’ve been in the presence of something genuinely important and overwhelming.
DExhilarated — like I’ve just seen cinema doing something it’s never quite done before.
EHaunted — like a cold, quiet dread that stays with me for days.
REVEAL MY FILM →
The Academy Has Decided
Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
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‘The Queen’s Gambit’ Is an Expertly Done Coming-of-Age Drama
Starting off in Kentucky during the 1950s and 1960s, The Queen’s Gambit follows the life of Beth Harmon (younger version played by Isla Johnston) as she’s orphaned and sent to a school for girls. At this institution, the students are regularly given heavy tranquilizers in lieu of discipline and care, and, unsurprisingly, Beth becomes addicted. Also at this school, Beth bonds with the custodian, named Mr. Shaibel (Bill Camp), who teaches her how to play chess and takes her to a local high school to test her skills against their chess club. Beth demolishes them, and it seems like her future is set.
Years later, Beth (now played by Taylor-Joy) is taken to chess tournaments so her adoptive mother, Alma (Marielle Heller), can cash in the rewards. Despite their complicated dynamics at home, Beth hones her skills, wins more titles, learns Russian, develops rivalries and romances with other chess players, and tries to get a handle on her substance abuse. Over time, she develops an almost superhuman ability to visualize her games, especially when she’s inebriated or under the influence of drugs, which only makes the habit harder to kick. The series culminates in Moscow, where Beth finally faces off against the Soviet World Champion.
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Through the span of its seven episodes, the series gives the full picture of Beth’s life, from her humble beginnings to her greatest victory. With no “filler” episodes or tangential storylines, the series thrills viewers with a sharp focus and a fast pace. Throughout it all, the series also shows the strategic mindset and intensity of world championship chess. Touching on thematic ideas of gender inequality, the isolating burden of genius, and the obsessive nature of ambition, in addition to its focus on sports and substance abuse, the series captivates viewers with its absorbing story as much as it does with its spellbinding period allure.
With all that said, The Queen’s Gambit remains as one of Netflix’s most successful and compelling original titles. The first month of the series generated over 62 million views, and the series has been enthralling and captivating viewers ever since. The series makes a serious case for the magic that a carefully constructed miniseries can have, but so few Netflix titles have followed suit.
Release Date
2020 – 2020-00-00
Showrunner
Scott Frank
Directors
Scott Frank
Writers
Scott Frank
