“Rematch”: duel on the chessboard

Let’s reassure novices right away: it is not necessary to master chess tactics to appreciate this series. In the same way as The Queen’s Game, about the rise of an orphan in the closed circle of professional players, succeeded in 2020 in captivating 62 million spectators on Netflix, the series Rematch seduced because it is above all interested in the humanity of its characters, the springs of their genius and the intimate flaws likely to cause their downfall.

Awarded the grand prize in the international competition at the Séries Mania 2024 festival, this French production looks back at the face-to-face which in 1997 opposed the Russian Garry Kasparov, world champion for eleven years, and the supercomputer Deep Blue. The first episode places the pieces on the board (like Kasparov’s initiation by his sick father) and retraces the first round, which saw the man triumph over the metal colossus manufactured by IBM.

Thrilling psychological thriller

The American firm, whose stock market price was plunging, could not cope with this humiliation and obtained a return match or “rematch” a year later. The best chess masters on the planet are then recruited to boost Deep Blue’s strategies, thus becoming one of the first artificial intelligence experiments in history. To destabilize Kasparov, anything goes. Despite the support of public opinion which sees him as the bulwark of humanity against the machine, the king of chess begins to doubt, to lose his footing.

Even if we know the outcome of the fight, the psychological thriller proves gripping. Christian Cooke intensely interprets the multiple faces of the shady champion, sometimes unbearably arrogant, sometimes a little lost boy seeking comfort from his mother who has become his coach. Opposite him, Orion Lee makes us smile as an introverted engineer attached to Deep Blue like his baby. And Sarah Bolger is perfect as an ambitious IBM executive, ready to do anything to satisfy her terrifying boss.