In olden TV times, the tumultuous romance of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald would have been turned into a movie, or maybe a miniseries. Today, it’s been sliced somewhat awkwardly into a 10-part Amazon series, “Z: The Beginning of Everything,” with Christina Ricci lending star power to a handsome but not great trip along the wrong side of paradise.
Ricci is introduced as the spirited, rebellious daughter of an Alabama judge, Zelda Sayre, and a gal who isn’t above skinny dipping or kissing the soldiers waiting to be shipped off to World War I. Her dad, played by the ever-reliable David Strathairn, dubs her a “hussy” with “no sense of propriety.”
Still, Zelda’s dalliances haven’t run across the right beau until she meets Fitzgerald (Australian actor David Hoflin, replacing Gavin Stenhouse from the previously shown pilot), who, struck by the proverbial thunderbolt, soon announces to her, “I’m gonna be a great writer some day.”
A whirlwind courtship ensues, leading to the couple’s marriage and move to New York, where Scott begins to make good on his promise — publishing the well-received “This Side of Paradise” in 1920 — and Zelda becomes a glamorous symbol of Jazz Age debauchery.
After that, though, Scott begins to exhibit all the tendencies of a tortured, tantrum-throwing artist — indulging in booze and wild parties while grappling with a nasty case of writer’s block — while Zelda alternately joins in and fumes, both at his excesses and his attempts to control her.
The free-wheeling Fitzgeralds have always been a source of fascination, and producers Nicole Yorkin and Dawn Prestwich — working from the Zelda-centric book “Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald” — revel in their decadence. The series also does a nifty job of replicating the early-20th-century trappings.
What is hasn’t done, ultimately, is make this feel like much more than an old-fashioned miniseries, or completely crack the arbitrary structure of breaking the story into installments that run less than 30 minutes each.
The press notes describe “Z” as “fictionalized,” so liberties will be taken. Even so, the result is a show that feels as if it’s unfolding in slow motion, covering a relatively small period in the couple’s life even over the course of nearly five hours. That’s a lot of time to devote to any relationship, even one as zesty as this.
Ricci is certainly convincing as a Southern Belle, and she helps make “Z” reasonably watchable. But when Scott grumbles in a later episode — well before publishing “The Great Gatsy” — “What if I never finish anything again?,” there’s a question whether, as a viewer, it’s worth hanging around long enough to see him do it.
“Z: The Beginning of Everything” premieres January 27 on Amazon.