Amazon Prime

Twin sisters, Elliot and Beverly, both brilliant gynaecologists, open a birthing clinic but their dysfunctional relationship threatens to destroy their ambitions.

It’s 35 years since I sat, pinned to my seat by Jeremy Irons’s calmly compelling performance as the twin Mantle brothers, charting their descent into mutual and gory self-destruction in David Cronenberg’s 1988 psychological body horror, Dead Ringers. It wasn’t exactly an enjoyable film, but it was gripping and hard to forget. Spool forward to an age where every film I ever loved has to be reimagined as a multi-episodic TV drama, and we find Rachel Weisz reinventing the Mantle siblings as twin sisters. To be brutally honest, my gut response to most of these reimaginings is a curmudgeonly: ‘Oh God. Do you have to?’

In the case of Dead Ringers, however, re-working the story with the genders flipped – after three and a half decades of advances in fertility and reproductive science; post #MeToo and well into so-called ‘4th Wave’ Feminism (we were only just into the 2nd Wave when Cronenberg was rolling his cameras); and a year after Roe v Wade was overturned – makes complete sense.

Whether the series itself makes complete sense is another matter. There is a lot going on in this show. We have a good old delve into the ongoing debate around women’s reproductive rights; we have a dabble into the poisonous relationship between medicine and capitalism (there are some riveting dinner parties with Jennifer Ehle’s ruthless tech billionaire Rebecca which give Succession a run for its money); we take a few short detours into the role of patriarchy and racism in the development of gynaecology; there’s some Frankenstein science v nature shenanigans; a foray into the deeper, darker aspects of addiction and mental health; a critical finger is wagged at notions of parenthood, with a stop-off to consider nature v nurture for good measure; and it’s all held together by the emotional throughline of the Mantle sisters’ super-dark, obsessional and toxic relationship as twins, unable to live with each other, but even less able to function apart.

I’ve probably missed something from this list, but you get the idea. On the one hand, it makes for one of the most intelligent and stimulating series I’ve seen in years. I sat down to watch two episodes for a series preview but before I knew it, I’d devoured the whole thing. On the other, it’s all over the place, a show with intellectual ADHD, a bit like throwing a match into a box of fireworks and setting off a bunch of brilliant pyrotechnics all at once, but lacking the coherence you want from a really good display.

This TV version has far less abstracted horror than the Cronenberg original, which allows the series to keep its feet on surer intellectual ground, but also allows the audience to question the plausibility of a more conventional finale.

It survives and compels because Rachel Weisz gives a career defining performance and you genuinely can’t see the join at any point, although how the flaky Mantle twins ever got a licence to practice on anyone is an improbability you might just have to put to one side. Jennifer Ehle is terrific (I could have had a lot more of her character) and there’s beautifully anchored supporting performance from Michael Chernus as Tom, the sisters’ long-suffering research colleague.

Verdict: Dead Ringers is undoubtedly flawed. Indeed, it’s all over the place, but it’s as gripping and memorable as the original, if not more so, and I, for one, would rather have too many ideas than not enough. Definitely one of the TV highlights of 2023 so far. 8/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com