Period pieces typically unfold in one-hour increments. Z covers a thin slice of the Fitzgerald history, starting near the end of World War I, when the two first meet in Zelda’s hometown of Montgomery, Alabama, and concluding at, roughly, the beginning of 1921, when marital storm clouds have already started to gather, but Zelda has not yet actively started struggling with mental illness. Zelda, Scott, and their growing group of friends aren’t bright young things they’re more like reasonably illuminated young things. But even though we see her do things that fall in the daring category - like shutting down a post-wedding party by announcing, while fully naked, that she and her new husband need some alone time - Z: The Beginning of Everything doesn’t fully capture the energy or sense of unpredictability that swirled around her. It establishes, for example, Zelda Fitzgerald’s reputation for bucking convention in ways considered daring for the time. At its best, Z, based on Therese Anne Fowler’s novel about the flapper-era icon, is a like a much more serious, U.S.-based, Fitzgerald-focused spin on the time-travel sequences in Midnight in Paris.īut there’s ultimately something too restrained about this ten-episode series. Scott Fitzgerald (David Hoflin) and his wife/muse (a fierce, focused Christina Ricci), particularly after the Fitzgeralds marry, join New York’s cultural elite, and famously begin fighting, drinking, and dancing in public fountains. There are moments when it’s exhilarating to be immersed in the 1920s with Great Gatsby author F.
Z: The Beginning of Everything, a new Amazon series that starts streaming today, tries to capture the many facets of this complex and conflicted woman, and does so with some success. That is why, nearly 70 years after her death, famous misbehaver Zelda Fitzgerald is still actively being discussed and dissected, in books, films (Hollywood has two in the works at the moment), and, now, on television.
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