The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey: Samuel L. Jackson’s Deep Acting Dive
By Liam Lacey
Rating: B
The new Apple TV+ six-part series, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, is adapted by Walter Mosley’s from his own 2010 novel. To date, the best-known adaptation of his more than 40 books has been director Carl Franklin’s 1995 adaptation of Devil In A Blue Dress, from his detective series featuring private investigator, Easy Rawlings.
There’s a murder mystery in this series, too, though it’s secondary to a time-jumping saga combining a Black historical trauma, and a fanciful adventure of hidden treasure and an age-reversing medical procedure. To be honest, neither the historical nor fictional material provided by Mosley are as interesting as the actors carrying the story.
Samuel L. Jackson stars as the title character, a man in his nineties struggling with dementia with co-star Dominique Fishback (who was terrific in Judas and the Black Messiah) as an orphaned teenager who becomes Ptolemy’s caregiver.
Jackson has become one of the biggest box office stars of all time for his brash, masculine persona; it’s a pleasure to watch him stretch and transform here in a big empathetic performance. Fishback more than holds her own as a wounded soul who flourishes and becomes Ptolemy’s fierce ally when shown some kindness.
The initial version of Ptolemy is a shaky, fearful old man, living in a squalid bug-infested Atlanta apartment, afraid of a local woman addict who regularly attacks him to steal his money. His great-nephew caretaker Reggie (Omar Benson Miller), drops by from time to time to help Ptolemy with his shopping and appointments. One of those includes a doctor who may, at least temporarily, restore Ptolemy’s shredded memories.
What memories Ptolemy has are from his childhood, and especially of his mentor and uncle, Coydog McCann (Damon Gupton, seen in flashbacks). The young Ptolemy watched as Coydog was lynched for stealing a white man’s treasure. As well, Ptolemy has painful hallucinations of his beloved though serially unfaithful wife (Cynthia Kaye McWilliams) who died many years before.
In the opening episode, the aged Ptolemy finds himself taken to the home of his extended family and, to his shock, the wake of Reggie, who he learns was killed in an unsolved shooting. Reggie’s niece, Niecie (Marsha Stephanie Blake) promptly provides him with a new caretaker, 17-year-old Robyn (Fishback) who she has recently taken in when the girl’s mother died. Later, Niecie abruptly evicts the girl to protect her from her predatory son.
Robyn makes her way to Ptolemy’s apartment door. She cleans the places, fumigates it, and moves in. She also finds an appointment slip and takes him to Doctor Rubin (Walton Goggins) who wants to try an experimental drug on him that might temporarily restore his memory. Ptolemy refuses compensation for being a guinea pig and refers to the doctor as Satan, but he’s willing to make his deal with the devil.
“I have a lot of things to do, and I need my memories to do them,” he tells the dubious Robyn.
The science fiction element here feels contrived, while echoing a couple of movies about characters who achieve limited periods of lucidity, such as Charly and the reality-based Awakenings. But there’s a narrative logic in the idea of having a limited window of time to solve a crime though the ticking clock never sounds particularly urgent here.
Dialogue and atmosphere are more important than momentum in a series that uses four directors. Director Rahmin Bahrani (Man Push Cart, The White Tiger) directs the first episode, with duties handed off to three other directors for the series as Ptolemy’s new treatment not only makes him more aware of the present but releases a flood of troubling memories.
The effect is less an “arc” than a spiral that turns back on itself as it inches forward. No doubt, this five-and-a-half-hour series could have been compressed into an effective two-hour feature but the interplay between the two characters, and Mosley’s ear for believable dialogue, are consistently effective.
As well, the series is a well-earned chance for Jackson to take his biggest acting dive in years, transitioning between confused and lucid, but also — through various prosthetics and de-aging CGI —the same changing man over the course of different decades. Only the seven-year-old version of Ptolemy isn’t played by Jackson though one imagines he could pull that off, too.
CLICK HERE to see Bonnie Laufer’s interviews with Walter Mosley and series stars, Dominique Fishback, Omar Benson Miller, Marsha Stephanie Blake and Cynthia Kate McWilliams.
The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray. Directed by Rahmin Bahrani, Debbie Allen, Hanelle Culpepper and Guillermo Navarro. Written by Walter Mosley. Starring Samuel L. Jackson and Dominique Fishback. Available on AppleTV+ March 11 (episodes 1 and 2); with subsequent episodes airing Fridays to April 8.