Courtesy of Prime
Dead Ringers (premiering Apr. 21 on Prime Video) accomplishes less in six hours than what David Cronenberg’s 1988 feature film did in two—an example of subtraction by addition that’s indicative of modern streaming services’ approach to expansive adaptation. Handsomely mounted, well-performed, and modestly engaging, it puts forth great effort and care to achieve inferior redundancy. Or, to state the issue more plainly via a quote from one of its characters, “Why are we doing this again?”
The answers are as obvious as they are dispiriting. First, just as Cronenberg’s thriller provided Jeremy Irons with the chance to play yin-yang twins Elliot and Beverly Mantle, so does Alice Birch’s six-part mini-series grant Rachel Weisz that same opportunity. This time, however, Dead Ringers has the benefit of enhanced digital effects that make the proceedings’ central duplicative stunt less impressive than Cronenberg’s cine-sleight of hand from three decades earlier.
More pressingly, though, it affords Prime Video (and everyone involved) established—and thus easily marketable—material that requires only invention through distension. And distended it is, as swollen as the pregnant women whom gynecologists Elliot and Beverly treat at their hospital, when they’re not also tending to women with fertility issues that they believe could be better served at their own as-yet-unrealized private clinic.