Television series
Paolo
- Psychological thriller
- Political drama
- Very dark
- Relentless
Paolo is a slow-burn character study wearing a thriller's clothes: an ordinary, decent-seeming man drawn into the orbit of a golden-boy politician, admiration curdling scene by scene into something closer to hunger. HBO Max's own 'Ripley-style' framing tells you where this is headed — impersonation, ambition, blood — but the real pleasure is watching a plain man quietly disassemble himself from the inside.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you like slow-building psychological thrillers where the menace grows out of a friendship that curdles, the way the Ripley novels do.
Skip it if you need characters who stay likeable or a story that keeps its distance, because this one pulls you closer to a man's growing obsession and won't let you look away.
What it asks of you: A single 52-minute episode of slow simmer, watchful close-ups and little relief between scenes, so it rewards patience over momentum.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Saltburn2023
A working-class outsider fixates on a golden, aristocratic friend and slowly, delightedly ruins everything he touches — it's Ripley's engine dressed in Oxford tailoring and needle drops, gleeful about its own cruelty.
But It's more interested in shocking you than moving you, and the satire of wealth is thinner than the film thinks.
Ripley2024
The most direct cousin here — a glacial, black-and-white retelling of the exact story Paolo borrows its bones from, all cold Italian light and quiet moral rot beneath good manners.
But Eight hours of near-silent scheming tests patience; if you want momentum rather than atmosphere, this will feel punishingly slow.
The Talented Mr. Ripley1999
Still the warmest, most seductive version of this story — Matt Damon's hunger for a life that isn't his plays as tragedy as much as menace, sunlit and genuinely aching.
But Its late-90s glamour and pacing feel gentler than modern thrillers; it earns its violence slowly rather than delivering shocks.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Paolo
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Purple Noon1960
Paolo is explicitly pitched as 'Ripley-style'; this is the actual Ripley, the first screen version of Highsmith's novel, made when the amoral social climber was still a shocking, unfamiliar figure.
This is where 'Ripley-style' actually comes from — a gorgeous, unnerving French thriller that got there decades before anyone else, with a lead so charismatic you forgive him before you should.
But Subtitled, slower by modern standards, and its ending was softened for 1960 audiences — don't expect the note the newer versions strike.
More like this (8)
You2018
If you want the obsession stretched across seasons rather than compressed into one, this gives you a magnetic, self-justifying narrator who mistakes possession for love — pulpy and addictive.
But The voiceover conceit and escalating plots wear thin after a season or two; it knows it's trashy and leans in hard.
Parasite2019
Class envy taken to its most elegant, devastating extreme — a family infiltrates a wealthier household with charm and lies, and the film turns from comedy to horror without warning.
But It's a masterpiece, but the tonal whiplash in its final act is deliberately upsetting, not comforting viewing.
Killing Eve2018
Two people orbit each other with a mutual fascination that curdles into something dangerous and erotic — the cat-and-mouse version of Paolo's admiration-turned-obsession, played with real wit and style.
But The show's quality dips hard after its first run, and the ending divided viewers badly.
Match Point2005
A charming social climber marries into money and comfort, then discovers how easily ambition slides into something criminal the moment losing it all becomes the alternative.
But Woody Allen's involvement is, for many, a dealbreaker regardless of the film's merits.
Nightcrawler2014
Not about class or politics, but the same cold, adaptable hunger — a nobody reinvents himself as a predator of opportunity, and Gyllenhaal makes the transformation genuinely unsettling.
But There's no one to root for, and the film offers no catharsis, just escalation into something worse.
A Very English Scandal2018
A closeted political affair curdles into betrayal and an actual murder plot, based on a true scandal — funnier and sadder than you'd expect from a story this grim.
But Its very British, stiff-upper-lip comic tone might undercut the menace for viewers wanting something starker.
The Imposter2012
Where Paolo dramatises the seduction of becoming someone else, this documentary hands you the real thing: an actual impostor narrating his own manipulation and identity theft, stripped of fictional comfort.
A real con man calmly narrates how he convinced a grieving Texas family he was their missing son — Paolo's premise with no fiction to soften it, and worse for being true.
But It's a documentary, not a thriller, so there's no release valve of drama — just the slow horror of watching people believe what they need to.
All About Eve1950
Swap politics for the stage and murder for social annihilation, and you have Paolo's exact structure: an ambitious admirer infiltrates a golden figure's life until the imitation threatens to replace the original.
Decades before any Ripley, this backstage melodrama gave us the ultimate admiring understudy — one who studies her idol so closely she starts quietly replacing her, all done with dialogue instead of daggers.
But No violence at all, and its theatrical, wordy style is a world away from anything you'd call a thriller.
