I don’t watch a lot of television, but when my sister gave my Arts Editor a gift of a Amazon Prime membership, we started taking advantage of it.
One of the shows we tripped across is Endgame, the principal character of which is fictional chess Grandmaster Arkady Balagan. Having witnessed the assassination of his fiancee, he is now trapped by the psychological damage from the incident in the hotel in which they were staying prior to her death. In order to finance his stay in this high-end hotel, he turns to crime-solving using his analytical skills and his Russian temperament, but in the background is conducting his own investigation of his fiancee’s death, in association with his fiancee’s young, determined, yet naive sister.
If you enjoy modern crime solving dramas, this is not a bad little series to try out. The acting is more than competent, the staging and character chemistry is well done, and the stories are enjoyably intricate.
The wonder, of course, is why this intriguing effort didn’t make it more than the single season. It certainly had a lovely cliff-hanger season ending, as Balagon is warned not to further pursue his investigations of his fiancee’s death. Perhaps even better, characters are not necessarily permanent, as one dies in the final episode.
We’d have happily watched more episodes, and I don’t know why they didn’t continue this show. Put it in the file labeled One season wonders.
