Given my love for Anne of Green Gables, I was always going to be interested in the story of a red-headed orphan. The Queen’s Gambit flooded my twitter timeline recently, so I made the first move, intrigued by the whole chess premise. As a child, I was quite good at it – not Beth Harmon good, just Beth Morrey, i.e. good enough to appreciate the terrifying complexity of the game, without being master of it. I remember Deep Blue beating Kasparov, and always associated chess with an abyss – just too much depth to think about, so I don’t play anymore. Don’t mind watching though, because it turns out it’s completely gripping.

One of the many weird and charming things about this show is the rock-star status of chess players. Onlookers gather to see two titans clash, whispering tactics to each other like an episode of Mornington Crescent – ‘oh, he’s gone for the Perenyi Attack, that’s bold!’ The precision with which competitors move their pieces, the urgent flick of the clock, the darting eyes surveying the board – it’s all very tense and clever. Add glorious period detail to that, and you’ve got an oddly compelling, hypnotic kind of drama. It’s so decisively put together that I kept thinking the story must be based on real-life, and felt the urge to look things up on Wikipedia. Did Harmon really lose that first encounter with Benny Watts (Thomas Brodie-Sangster struggling to shake off his Love Actually role), and did she throw that first game with Borgov?

Furthermore, the show challenges your assumptions at every stage – I thought the orphanage would be a hell-hole, but it’s a kind of benign, austere boarding house, albeit one that drugs its young inhabitants. I feared that when Beth got adopted, she would be destined for drudgery or abuse, but no; it was something stranger and more insidious, though also peculiarly nurturing. Her ‘mother’ Mrs Wheatley (sublimely played by Marielle Heller) is a bizarre mix of vaguely maternal affection, disinterest, gleeful avarice, and barely functioning alcoholism, but for some reason it works, and their relationship is curiously touching.

I imagined the chess world would be rife with appalling sexism, but apart from some initial disbelief and derision, the men are almost all supportive and appreciative of Beth’s talent. Now, that’s very heartening, but I had to ask myself: is it realistic? Beth effortlessly crushes a series of male masters – in the 60s - and they greet their defeats with wry smiles and handshakes, then follow her around offering to help further her career. Are chess men really that nice? In which case, I want to marry one, even a nerd like Harry Beltik.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that this rare female of the chess world is rather fetching, facially. Anya Taylor-Joy is a magnetic screen presence, her extraordinary looks firmly pulling focus - the deliberation of her movements, those opaque wide-apart eyes, that bright curtain of russet hair. But Beth has the self-containment of a rocky-shored island – Prince Edward Island, perhaps - and as she progresses through life, becoming more alluring and assured, the people she encounters seem like helpful pawns destined to be forfeited. There was something I kept fretting about, that seems to encapsulate her gameplay. Did she pay Mr Shaibel back? The orphanage custodian who taught her, sparked that dazzling talent, the only adult who showed her a shred of consideration, and who lent her the entrance fee for her first competition. She wins $100, but we’re left hanging as to whether he was repaid as promised. When we eventually find out, I felt angry with Beth for accepting altruism so nonchalantly. It seems she took her biological mother’s advice to heart: take care of yourself, get used to being alone.

Towards the end of the series, a reunion, a road trip and old haunts provide some life lessons, and the air-punching climax felt like on-form Poliakoff. But there are still unanswered questions – there’s one more debt to be paid to convinced me that Beth is prepared to give as well as take. I guess, in that sense, the ending was nicely underplayed.

When Anne Shirley finds a kindred spirit, it’s for life, but Beth Harmon’s only constant is her chequered board. She’s the White Queen, moving forwards (sideways, diagonally) inexorably towards her goal. Can Beth learn to see her pawns - Mr Shaibel, childhood friend Jolene, Harry Beltik, Benny Watts – as worthy, or are they destined to be exploited and cast aside? Which, of course, was always the point of that oldest and most notorious of sacrificial moves, the Queen’s Gambit.

• The Queen’s Gambit, 7 episodes, Netflix