Dead Ringers: Double the Trouble

Dead Ringers is a psychological thriller based on the 1988 film of the same name, which in itself is based on the book Twins by Bari Wood and jack Geasland and the book is a highly fictionalized version of real life twins Stewart and Cyril Marcus. In this new version streaming on Prime video, the lead(s), Beverly and Elliot Mantle (Rachel Weisz) have been gender swapped from the original character played by Jeremy Irons, but the plot remains mainly the same. Beverly and Elliot are doctors at a hospital’s maternity ward.  Their dream is to open their own birthing center where they can revolutionize the treatment of pregnant women.  Beverly is a shy and demure lesbian who longs to have children of her own but can’t seem to carry a child to term.  Elliot is the wild child, drug addict and dreams of having her own lab, where the ethical limitations placed on fertility procedures wouldn’t get in the way.  The first episode is mainly expositional, giving us the information, we need to distinguish the twins personality, what their dreams and desires are and to highlight the trauma and tragedy that goes on in the maternity ward of a major metropolitan hospital.  The first episode also introduces the audience to the wedge that will drive the sisters down a spiral of mental instability.  That wedge being actress Genevieve Cotard (Britine Oldford) who Beverly begins to fall in love with.  The pair often will swap identities if they are with a patient that they don’t like or don’t feel they are right to handle, and from time to time, they do this in their personal lives as well.

This is a six part mini-series with all episodes currently available on Amazon Prime.  Full disclosure, I have only watched the first episode.  Part of the fun of this show is trying to deduce who is who and for the most part the audience is aware when the pair swap identities and when they swap back.  But there are scenes and images, possibly dreams in which it is hard to tell which sister is which and this is done by design to keep the audience guessing and confused.  There are movies and TV shows where a single actor plays multiple roles, and often what the audience sees is one actor putting on an accent here, wearing their hair different there, but you still see one person.  There is a danger of doing a production about twins, without really using twins. This is NOT the case in Dead Ringers, and I am happy to report that Rachel Weisz does an amazing job of creating two unique characters that are both so much alike, but also so very different, and while I was watching the episode, never did it cross my mind that this was the same actress playing two parts, but you see two separate people.  All the performances in the first episode are wonderfully nuanced and the writing is clever and witty, with a lot of drama and some comedy.

The only thing I can say negatively about the script is that the “F” bomb is dropped a lot.  Now I am an ex-sailor, and I swear like one, and normally it doesn’t bother me.  But sometimes, it is just a bit over the top, and in certain scenes where the dialogue is so wonderfully poetic and beautifully composed that the insertion of “f*ck” to the extent it was inserted pulled me out of the moment.  In addition, there is some very (cannot emphasize the “very” enough) graphic scenes of women giving birth including a c-section.  I do understand that this is a natural occurrence, and I am sure for the parents, watching this miracle of nature take place is very special, I am just not sure I need to see it on my television screen in this amount of detail.  But that’s just me.

I want to make it clear; I believe this is an amazing show, wonderfully written and beautifully acted, and I hope it does very well, but I will not continue watching it.  I didn’t particularly like the film it was based on, and to be honest, I don’t connect with any of the characters, which is a must for me to spend my sparce and valuable time watching a show.  I found the drama surrounding the patients in the hospital more interesting than the main plot.  Again, this is a quality show, with Rachel Weisz doing an amazing job, so give it a watch!