All the Samuel L. Jacksons show up in the elegiac The Last Days Of Ptolemy Grey

Not to diminish such a triumphant filmography, but you could say there are two Samuel L. Jacksons. One is the stone-cold badass who has dispensed wisecracks and justice in equal measure since Pulp Fiction: as slick vigilante John Shaft and Marvel Cinematic Universe wrangler Nick Fury, to name two. Then there’s Jackson as the older, vulnerable everyman, full of frailty and doubt, in artier projects such as Black Snake Moan, The Sunset Limited, and Django Unchained. The neat thing about the Apple TV+ miniseries The Last Days Of Ptolemy Grey? We get both Jacksons.

Apple TV+ Watch Guide | The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray

Based on the 2010 novel by the prolific Walter Mosley (who created, co-wrote, and executive produced the series with Jackson), Ptolemy Grey braids a few genres with style and humor to showcase its star’s range. We have a family-of-choice drama, an experimental-medical thriller, a murder mystery (this is the author of Devil In A Blue Dress, after all), and a period tragedy from the Jim Crow South, all rolled into one. And judging from the three episodes available for review, there’s plenty of backstory to fuel six hours.

First and foremost, Ptolemy Grey is a lovingly etched portrait of a man at the mercy of memory, dodging shards from the past lodged in the present. Hair wild and unkempt, beard a grizzled mass, those big, brown eyes bugging with panic, Jackson’s 91-year-old Ptolemy cuts a desperate figure at first, an elderly recluse practically buried under towers of books, newspapers, and ephemera hoarded in his Atlanta apartment. Living off cans of beans and staring at the TV news as classical radio burbles away, Ptolemy cannot keep out the PTSD-like flashbacks from 1930s Mississippi: a person on fire, screaming as he runs into a cornfield; a house engulfed in flames; a man named Coydog (Damon Gupton) who insists that young Ptolemy fulfill an unnamed promise. Apart from these guest specters, Ptolemy is forgotten.

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