Netflix’s miniseries Ripley is set in a slightly different time period than in the original novel. The new psychological drama series is based on the renowned 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley by celebrated novelist Patricia Highsmith, the first of her 5-part “Ripley” series that also includes Ripley Under Ground and Ripley’s Game. Ripley’s cast is led by an exceptionally chilling Andrew Scott (Fleabag, Black Mirror, All of Us Strangers) as the enigmatic Thomas Ripley, a con artist living in New York in the early 1960s.
Steven Zallian, the acclaimed screenwriter of Schindler’s List, American Gangster, and The Irishman, wrote and directed the entire 8-episode miniseries. Ripley follows grifter Thomas Ripley, who is given an unexpected job to locate an old friend named Richard ‘Dickie’ Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) who’s avoiding his life’s responsibilities in Atrani, a luxurious coastal city in Italy. Ripley, funded by Dickie’s father, travels to Atrani where he encounters Dickie and his girlfriend Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning).
The events that take place over the course of eight episodes in Zallian’s Ripley begin in the year 1960 in New York City and end in 1961 in Italy. This is slightly different from the book and the 1999 film, which both take place in the late 1950s. This would have essentially been present-day when Highsmith’s novel was published in 1955. Interestingly, the narrative in Zallian’s adaptation takes place a few years later than it does in the original book and popular film adaptation.
The specific year that The Talented Mr. Ripley film begins in 1958, since Tom Ripley is wearing a borrowed Princeton jacket from 1956, which makes Dickie’s father, Herbert Greenleaf, believe they were classmates. This leads to Herbert employing Tom to go to Italy to retrieve his son in the first place. This detail is notably left out of Zallian’s adaptation, which instead features a private detective hired by Herbert to track down Tom’s location in the first episode of Ripley. It’s one of many notable differences between Ripley and the 1999 film.
The Talented Mr. Ripley has been adapted several times for film and television, the most notable of them being the 1999 film starring Matt Damon, Jude Law, and Gwyneth Paltrow. Highsmith’s novel was considered a contemporary novel when it was first published in 1955, indicating that the events in the book took place in the mid-1950s. Zaillian himself has not commented on why he decided to slightly alter the time period from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s. It may have to do with him being born in 1953 and having more memories of the 1960s. It could also have to do with the Fiat 500 D cars seen throughout Ripley, which were invented in 1960.