the last days of ptolemy grey book review

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Review: The Graying of Samuel L. Jackson

In “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey,” on Apple TV+, an actor known for his intensity takes on a character living in a fog.

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By Mike Hale

Casting Samuel L. Jackson as a man in his 90s with dementia is a bold choice. Is there any actor more defined by his command, his cool, his razor-sharpness? It’s like telling Bill Murray not to be funny.

Funny thing is, the person who cast Jackson as the title character in “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey,” premiering Friday on Apple TV+, was Samuel L. Jackson. He bought the rights to Walter Mosley’s 2010 novel of the same name and stuck with the project for more than a decade, finally bringing it to television as a six-episode mini-series written by Mosley and Jerome Hairston.

Jackson has said he was attracted to the story because of the prevalence of Alzheimer’s in his own family. But you can see another, more strategic reason he might cotton to Mosley’s touching blend of parable, mystery and period melodrama. Through a slightly fantastical plot device, Ptolemy Grey slides back and forth between crotchety dementia and full, get-your-swagger-on capability. So Jackson gets to have it both ways, and the show’s tension springs from our continuing assessment of Ptolemy’s mental state. We’re constantly rooting for him to be as much like Samuel L. Jackson as possible.

Set in present-day Atlanta, “Last Days” walks a sometimes fuzzy line between heartening fable and realistic, kitchen-sink character drama. The kitchen sink is literal in the first and best episode, directed by Ramin Bahrani (who has made his own stories in this vein, like “Goodbye Solo” and “Man Push Cart”). We meet Ptolemy in his squalid apartment, a cockroach-infested hoarder’s paradise where he attends to the bleak drone of cable news and struggles to piece together fragmentary memories of his Mississippi childhood.

The sudden death of a caretaker brings Robyn (Dominique Fishback), an orphaned 17-year-old, into his life, and they bond immediately. Ptolemy responds to her determination and honesty; she appreciates his fatherly chivalry and the intellect and sensitivity that shine through his mental fog. She cleans up his apartment and institutes some order; when she finds a scrap of paper with the details of a forgotten doctor’s appointment, she makes sure he shows up.

The backbone of “Last Days” is the love and respect that builds between these two mismatched characters, and most of its pleasure comes from the easy rapport between Jackson and Fishback. (She played the young, perceptive prostitute Darlene in “The Deuce.”) Jackson is as charismatic as ever during the long stretches when Ptolemy is lucid, but he’s also an extremely generous scene partner, and he doesn’t get in the way of Fishback’s quiet, nuanced performance. (He also has some nice scenes with Omar Benson Miller, who is moving in a smaller role as Ptolemy’s great-nephew.)

Ptolemy and Robin’s friendship would be a sufficient basis for a shorter work — Jackson apparently resisted attempts to turn the novel into a movie — and it is supplemented by a solid mystery plot: Ptolemy is determined to use the time and brainpower he has left to find out who killed the caretaker Robyn replaced.

But then there’s the other half of the story, and here the show is on less sure ground. The doctor Ptolemy sees — played by the usually reliable Walton Goggins with a note of uneasy unctuousness — offers him an experimental, short-term miracle: a complete but temporary restoration of his mind and his memory. It’s a magical-realist bargain with the devil (a point hammered home by Ptolemy’s nickname for the doctor, Satan).

The device gives the mystery its kick — Ptolemy needs the treatments to work if he’s going to catch the murderer. But it also entails frequent, increasingly detailed flashbacks to traumatic events in Ptolemy’s rural Mississippi youth and scenes in which the elder Ptolemy communes with long-dead characters who shaped his life, including an uncle (Damon Gupton) and a former wife (Cynthia Kaye McWilliams).

This side of the show is well made and of obvious symbolic weight: Ptolemy himself suggests that his dementia might represent a purposeful forgetting, an unwillingness to deal with the horrors of racism and with his own deficiencies as a husband and father. (He assigns his failures a specifically racial dimension: He didn’t just need to be a better man, he needed to be a better Black man.) And his sacrificial but willing participation in the white doctor’s research is a complicated — or perhaps just muddled — reflection of the long history of the medical establishment’s exploitation of Black subjects.

The memory play isn’t very exciting, though, in terms of idea or action; you sit through it, waiting respectfully for the focus to come back to Ptolemy and Robyn as they tool around Atlanta and take care of business. (Some of that business concerns yet another plot strand, involving buried treasure and Ptolemy’s covetous relatives, that is entertaining if not very convincing.) And it gives the whole story a latent sentimentality that bursts through in the final episode.

In Jackson’s long career, “Last Days” is his first live-action starring role in a TV series, and you wish that he didn’t have to spend as much of it as he does auditioning for sainthood. When the story is being allegorical, it can be dreary and more than a little condescending. When it plays things straight with a fairy-tale chaser, it goes down smoothly.

Mike Hale is a television critic. He also writes about online video, film and media. He came to The Times in 1995 and worked as an editor in Sports, Arts & Leisure and Weekend Arts before becoming a critic in 2009. More about Mike Hale

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The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

"When you get old," says the 91-year-old hero of Walter Mosley's latest novel, "you begin to understand that no one talks unless someone listens, and no one knows nuthin' 'less somebody else can understand." It's a tidy summing-up of a theme that Mosley explores throughout this deeply moving story of aging and loss . In the changing and often confusing world that pensioner Ptolemy Grey inhabits, he must fight to make himself heard.

As the novel opens, we find Ptolemy living a timid, cloistered life in South Central Los Angeles, afraid to venture outside alone. He's sinking into dementia, and Ptolemy's mind, like his apartment, is becoming a jumble of memories accrued over the course of his long life. "Too many names were moving around in Ptolemy's mind," Mosley writes. "That's how Ptolemy imagined the disposition of his memories, his thoughts: they were still his, still in the range of his thinking, but they were, many and most of them, locked on the other side of a closed door that he'd lost the key for. So his memory became like secrets held away from his own mind. But these secrets were noisy things; they babbled and muttered behind the door, and so if he listened closely he might catch a snatch of something he once knew well."

Those snatches are often troubling. Memories of hard times, violence, and racism swirl through his head, along with a dull yearning for his adored wife, now long gone, and a strangely persistent tug of unfinished business. Only his great-nephew Reggie keeps Ptolemy tethered to the present, taking him to the grocery store, cashing his pension checks for him, and reminding him to eat. When Reggie is slain in a drive-by shooting, Ptolemy appears to have lost his sole anchor to reality.

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At Reggie's funeral, however, Ptolemy meets 17-year-old Robyn, a bright spark whose eyes "saw things that he wanted to see." Robyn takes it upon herself to care for Ptolemy, pulling him back into the world and igniting a desire to confront the troubling questions that surround the death of his great-nephew. Before he can move forward, however, Ptolemy must find a way to cut through the fog of his own dementia. "I know how a man could lose his mind," Ptolemy says, "but how do he find it again?"

The answer, he discovers, lies with a dangerous experimental drug that will bring Ptolemy the mental clarity he desires, but at the cost of a dramatically shortened life: He won't live to see his next birthday. As he signs his life away to an unscrupulous doctor, Ptolemy recognizes this "bargain" for the Faustian exchange it is: "Ptolemy raised his head; staring into [the doctor's] beady green eyes, he realized with a shock that he was staring into the face of the Devil."

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Even so, the medicine begins to do its work, persuading Ptolemy that he's getting the better end of the deal. "For a moment Ptolemy understood that the doctor's medicine had made him into many men from out of all the lives he had lived through the decades," Mosley writes. "It was certainly a Devil's potion, one that could give him the power to relive his mistakes and failures and change, if only slightly, the past events that hounded his dreams."

Who among us, the author seems to be asking, wouldn't strike this bargain?

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Walter Mosley, though best known for his popular "Easy Rawlins" detective novels, has always resisted easy categorization. His work ranges freely over many genres and styles — crime, literary mainstream, science fiction and social commentary, to name a few. (He's also said to be working on a biography of pioneering African American chemist Percy Julian.) The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, his 30th novel, finds Mosley at the height of his imaginative faculties, focusing his restless intelligence on the quandaries of growing old, and creating an unflinching portrait of a man who, even as his mind betrays him, keeps a firm grip on his dignity.

Two-time Edgar Award winner Daniel Stashower is completing a biography of Allan Pinkerton.

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Book Review: 'The Last Days Of Ptolemy Grey'

Alan Cheuse

Walter Mosley's latest novel, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey , is the story of an aged black man who struggles to maintain his life and his memories.

Copyright © 2010 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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THE LAST DAYS OF PTOLEMY GREY

by Walter Mosley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 11, 2010

Borrowing from Faust, the Iliad and Gran Torino, Mosley (Known to Evil, 2010, etc.) unforgettably transforms Ptolemy’s...

An ancient man living in solitary squalor in Los Angeles is offered an experimental medicine that just might beat back his creeping dementia—and will almost certainly kill him in the process.

At 91, Ptolemy Grey has outlived everyone he ever cared for. His uncle and mentor, Coydog McCann, was lynched back in Mississippi when Li’l Pea was only a child; his much younger wife, Sensia Howard, had a fatal stroke 22 years ago; and as his story opens, he’s summoned to the side of his much-loved son Reggie, his last link with the outside world, killed in a drive-by shooting. Unable to get services from the landlord who’s frustrated that he can’t raise the rent and afraid to go out alone lest he run into Melinda Hogarth, the crazy addict who keeps mugging him, Ptolemy lives amid an unending flood of uncontrolled memories and associations that render his mind as unusable as his clogged toilet. But his life turns around when he meets Robyn Small at Reggie’s wake. An orphan taken in by Ptolemy’s niece Niecie, Robyn has already, at 17, lived through as tempestuous a life as Ptolemy. But she’s emerged from its vicissitudes clear-eyed, tough-minded and eager to help the old man who claims her as a daughter. She cleans and fumigates his reeking apartment, sets up a bank account for the cash he’s socked away and takes him to see Dr. Bryant Ruben, the satanic physician who offers Ptolemy a medical therapy unapproved by the FDA that may improve his memory and his cognition, but at a high price. Robyn is shocked and repelled, but Ptolemy, who’s named after Cleopatra’s father, is eager to get something like his old life back.

Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2010

ISBN: 978-1-59448-772-9

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Riverhead

Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2010

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A LITTLE LIFE

by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.

Yanagihara ( The People in the Trees , 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.  

Pub Date: March 10, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8

Page Count: 720

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015

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by Hanya Yanagihara

PERSPECTIVES

by Elin Hilderbrand ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2015

Once again, Hilderbrand displays her gift for making us care most about her least likable characters.

Hilderbrand’s latest cautionary tale exposes the toxic—and hilarious—impact of gossip on even the most sophisticated of islands.

Eddie and Grace Pancik are known for their beautiful Nantucket home and grounds, financed with the profits from Eddie’s thriving real estate company (thriving before the crash of 2008, that is). Grace raises pedigreed hens and, with the help of hunky landscape architect Benton Coe, has achieved a lush paradise of fowl-friendly foliage. The Panciks’ teenage girls, Allegra and Hope, suffer invidious comparisons of their looks and sex appeal, although they're identical twins. The Panciks’ friends the Llewellyns (Madeline, a blocked novelist, and her airline-pilot husband, Trevor) invested $50,000, the lion’s share of Madeline’s last advance, in Eddie’s latest development. But Madeline, hard-pressed to come up with catalog copy, much less a new novel, is living in increasingly straightened circumstances, at least by Nantucket standards: she can only afford $2,000 per month on the apartment she rents in desperate hope that “a room of her own” will prime the creative pump. Construction on Eddie’s spec houses has stalled, thanks to the aforementioned crash. Grace, who has been nursing a crush on Benton for some time, gives in and a torrid affair ensues, which she ill-advisedly confides to Madeline after too many glasses of Screaming Eagle. With her agent and publisher dropping dire hints about clawing back her advance and Eddie “temporarily” unable to return the 50K, what’s a writer to do but to appropriate Grace’s adultery as fictional fodder? When Eddie is seen entering her apartment (to ask why she rented from a rival realtor), rumors spread about him and Madeline, and after the rival realtor sneaks a look at Madeline’s rough draft (which New York is hotly anticipating as “the Playboy Channel meets HGTV”), the island threatens to implode with prurient snark. No one is spared, not even Hilderbrand herself, “that other Nantucket novelist,” nor this magazine, “the notoriously cranky Kirkus.”

Pub Date: June 16, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-316-33452-5

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: May 20, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015

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by Elin Hilderbrand

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, the last days of ptolemy grey.

Walter Mosley is probably most famous for his popular mystery series starring African-American detective Easy Rawlins. But he has written over 30 novels that have switched genres seamlessly, from mysteries to serious fiction. Mosley is a natural-born storyteller and, like all great novelists, has a knack for being able to capture the pulse of his era. He does that brilliantly here. THE LAST DAYS OF PTOLEMY GREY is one of his greatest novels and a terrific story.

Ptolemy Grey is 91 years old and in deep trouble when the book starts. Dementia has left him lost in a fog between things that happened to him eight decades before and the present. His wife is long dead, and he is living alone in a vermin-infested, impossibly cluttered apartment in a dangerous section of L.A. The bathroom is stopped up, and his bedroom has been sealed off since his wife died there. He sleeps on a mattress beneath the “southern table.” His only company is the TV and radio, which are on 24/7, tuned to a cable news channel and classical music station. He can’t turn them off for fear he will touch the wrong knob and never find them again.

In this childlike state, his only lifeline is his grandnephew, Reggie, who comes over every few weeks to take him to the store and bank. Ptolemy lives in a self-created tomb. Whenever he ventures out alone, he is viciously attacked and robbed by a woman who is the neighborhood junkie. His apartment contains “the detritus of a lifetime… like so much soil pressed down into a grave.”

What is even more hellish is that he is somewhat aware of his condition. His mind is “locked on the other side of a closed door he lost the key for. So memory became like secrets held away from his own mind. But these secrets were noisy things; they babbled and muttered behind the door, and so if he listened closely he might catch a snatch of something he once knew well.”

Then disaster really strikes when Reggie is killed in a drive-by shooting. Another distant young relative brings him to the bank, steals two thirds of his retirement check, and takes him to Reggie’s wake. There, this lost child of an old man meets a lost child of a 17-year-old girl who is also on her own with no family at all. And magic happens. Robyn enters Ptolemy’s life and refuses to allow him to lose his dignity in his final days. And a strong bond of improbable love develops between the two.

The old man is haunted by his past, including seeing his uncle and mentor lynched and set on fire by a mob in Mississippi. He has lived an ordinary, nondescript life. But he is obsessed by what he did not have the courage to do and wants to do something to make it all right at the end. Robyn cleans out his apartment and makes it livable again. Then she takes him to a rather shady doctor who is doing “experiments” on memory drugs for those suffering from dementia.

Ptolemy, who grew up in Mississippi and knows all about the blues, instantly recognized the doctor as “Satan” and sees the Faustian bargain being offered him. The memory drug will give him back his memory for just a few weeks but then kill him. He immediately takes the deal, seeing it as his chance at redemption, his opportunity to possibly avenge Reggie’s murder and provide for the new woman he deeply loves and Reggie’s two young children.

Through his art, a great novelist can reflect where a country has been and where it is going. Mosley has said that this book was inspired by his mother’s five-year descent into dementia. And indeed, as the baby boomers age, this is a disease that tortures more and more families. But how many of these once-proud elders will be forced to face this sad twilight alone like Ptolemy? Ptolemy’s extended family is in too much of an economic struggle for survival to take him in or give him much care. Now, we live in a country where politicians glibly talk about ending “entitlements” to solve the debt crises. And that is code word for cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and social programs to help the poor and elderly, while the rich get more tax breaks and eat up more and more of the nation’s wealth.

And Mosley also tackles the issue of violence in America. The 24-hour TV news talks endlessly about bombs going off in Baghdad as a result of our war of choice, while young men of color gun down each other on the Mean Streets of America. Mosley said in an interview: “The violence against black manhood starts with Africans kidnapped from their native lands, robbed of their freedom, broken down in a culture that they have no investment in and then, finally, turned against themselves. From lynching to self-eradication is a straight, short line.”

But while dealing with reality, a novelist also deals with the human heart in crises, and here is where THE LAST DAYS OF PTOLEMY GREY becomes a great American novel. The love between Ptolemy and Robyn is not salacious but pure --- the union of two lost and damaged souls that ultimately transcends boundaries of time, age and death itself. At first glance, some might be tempted to write Ptolemy off as a sad old man who lived longer than he should have. In his last days, however, he is willing to struggle and fight for redemption and justice. And in his fight and victory lay the seeds of our possible triumph.

What Walter Mosley has accomplished in this beautiful little book is to teach us that it is never too late for us --- never too late to find love, never too late for redemption, never too late to make a stand and fight for what is right. There is always hope right up until the last second. Our ultimate challenge is to have the courage to make the fight and never give up like Ptolemy Grey.

Reviewed by Tom Callahan on October 31, 2011

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey by Walter Mosley

• Publication Date: November 1, 2011
• Genres: Fiction
• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Riverhead Trade
• ISBN-10: 159448550X
• ISBN-13: 9781594485503

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey review – this is Samuel L Jackson’s career-best performance

Poignant, vulnerable, unsparing: the actor’s portrayal of a man with dementia in this new drama is clearly a passion project – and it carries the show

A shuffling, broken down Samuel L Jackson is quite a sight. In The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey (AppleTV+), he plays the eponymous Grey, a man suffering from rapidly progressing dementia, living in hermitic squalor despite the best efforts of his loving great-nephew Reggie (Omar Benson Miller), who is a last, fragile link with the outside world until he is killed in an unsolved shooting.

And yet he holds your attention as firmly as he ever did as the biblically monologuing Jules in Pulp Fiction, or as Nick Fury in the MCU or – of course – as FBI agent Neville Flynn trying to keep track of all those snakes on that plane in 2006’s enduring masterpiece Snakes on a Plane. In his moments of lucidity Ptolemy is frightened of the ever changing world. In the rest he is distraught, burdened by unknown horrors and haunted by people and fragmented scenes from his childhood in the Jim Crow south. It is a rounded and unsparing portrait of dementia and to see the 73-year-old actor offer up such a vulnerable performance after a career largely built on dazzling us with the opposite adds a poignancy all of its own.

Jackson’s portrayal of a man whose life is fading away from him is one of two reasons to stick with The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey. The other is Ptolemy’s growing relationship with his niece’s best friend’s daughter Robyn (on a good day he remembers all of this), who gradually comes to take Reggie’s place. What she lacks in initial tenderness she more than makes up for in her ability to tackle his disgusting bathroom and blocked toilet. Greater love hath no one.

Robyn is played by Dominique Fishback, who is simply astonishing. Going toe-to-toe with Jackson in her first main television role, hers is a mesmerising and complex depiction of a young woman hardened by a tough start in life – and with the hair-trigger fighting instincts to prove it – who nevertheless cares for the old man, to whom she is no actual relation, and who is able to blossom in her own way under his attention.

This core relationship and the pair’s evolving dynamic is what, I suspect, will keep most people watching while Plot with a capital P starts to billow round them. Ptolemy signs up to an experimental treatment invented and administered by a pushy research doctor (Walton Goggins) – a kind of limited Limitless pill that will restore him to himself but only briefly and leave him worse off thereafter. As it kicks in, it allows Ptolemy to become the charismatic raconteur he once was (and Jackson to bust out his more typical moves) while piecing together and coming to terms with his traumatic past, which includes witnessing the lynching of his uncle and mentor Coydog McCann (Damon Gupton), investigating Reggie’s murder, tracing the stolen treasure for which his uncle was killed. Throughout, he fends off family members and officials who seek to spoil and sever his and Robyn’s friendship.

It’s a lot – although the magical pill aspect is at least not dwelt on too heavily and allowed to add a full sci-fi vibe to the brew as well – and not all of it is worth it. There are some very extraneous bits indeed, such as the local drug addict who tries to attack Ptolemy every time he leaves his house. She seems to be there to do nothing but help explain his isolation before Robyn comes along and to add tension to various scenes. The conclusion – Ptolemy redeemed, Robyn’s self-image remade, the good generally ending happily, the bad unhappily – is unremarkable and clearly destined pretty much from the opening episode. It feels like there is a better, shorter story here, stripped of the schmaltz that, however hard they try to banish hit, seems to creep inevitably into American tales of friendship (especially between young and old) and any wrestling with the indignities of age. It would benefit from focusing more tightly on the two main characters and the realities of their lives separately and together.

But it is in many ways a career-best performance from Jackson (and from Fishback, though we must hope that hers is merely the first of many to come), and there is joy to seeing it in what must have been a passion project for him, as a longtime supporter of Alzheimer’s charities. He executive produces and has had the rights to the Walter Mosley book the series is based on for nearly a decade. If it turns out to be something of a swansong – or at least, his non-MCU swansong – it would be a fine one to go out on.

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The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey review: An emotive exploration of memory

Samuel L. Jackson’s streaming debut is touching, yet somewhat lacking in mystery and suspense

By Jon O'Brien

9 March 2022

Ptolemy Grey (Samuel L. Jackson) has advanced dementia, but a new drug changes everything

Hopper Stone/Apple TV+

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

Walter Mosley

“I GOT to set things right,” says Ptolemy Grey, Samuel L. Jackson’s latest screen incarnation. He talks into a tape recorder while loading a bullet intended for the man banging on his apartment door. “That motherfucker got to pay for what he’s done.” The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey ‘s opening scene could have been lifted from a belated Pulp Fiction spin-off, revisiting Jackson’s foul-mouthed, fast-food-obsessed , gun-toting hitman Jules Winnfield nearly three decades on.

Then the action flashes back to just two months earlier. Now we see Ptolemy as a dishevelled, confused 93-year-old living on tinned sausages and beans in a cockroach-infested flat. Regular visits from his kindly great-nephew Reggie (Omar Benson Miller) are his only respite.

This six-part drama, adapted by Walter Mosley from his 2010 novel of the same name, begins by painting a heartbreakingly convincing picture of a man with his mundane daily routines are interspersed with visions of his beloved late wife and often horrifying flashbacks from his childhood in the Deep South.

The story takes a turn for the fantastical when Ptolemy discovers he is eligible for a new drug trial that will restore his memories in crystal-clear detail . The catch is that it is a temporary fix and will worsen his condition in the long run.

Despite this obvious drawback, Ptolemy jumps at the chance to sign up, having discovered that what he thought was a birthday party was actually Reggie’s funeral. He needs his mind back to find out who is responsible for Reggie’s death.

It is an intriguing set-up, but one that Mosley fails to capitalise on. Ptolemy’s amateur sleuthing isn’t engaging, and the culprit is eventually revealed so casually that it barely registers. A gripping whodunnit this isn’t, perhaps surprisingly considering that Mosley built his reputation on his novels about the hard-boiled detective Easy Rawlins.

The series works much better as a meditation on memories , consciousness and the passing of time . Ptolemy enjoys learning how things like hip-hop and the internet have progressed during his cognitive decline.

But as he tells Dr. Rubin (Walton Goggins), who is running the drug trial, some things are forgotten for a reason . Remembering elements of his traumatic childhood under racial segregation solves a few mysteries, but also increases his night terrors. And as Ptolemy gets closer to the truth about his great-nephew, he finds it harder to control the reactions that would have stayed buried with his memories.

Jackson, giving his first on-screen lead performance in TV’s new golden age, appears to relish flexing his acting muscles a little harder than he has of late. Through some impressive ageing and de-ageing make-up, he gets to portray Ptolemy across a half-century of his life, giving his character’s shifts between degeneration and regeneration an emotional resonance that has been lacking in some of his recent big-screen work.

Fresh from her BAFTA-nominated role in Judas and the Black Messiah , Dominique Fishback also impresses as teenage orphan Robyn, the only other member of Ptolemy’s circle who sees him as a person rather than an inconvenience. Their touching, platonic relationship is far more engaging than any of the several romantic subplots.

But even this strong central pairing isn’t quite enough to compensate for an unfocused and underwhelming narrative. Ironically, for a drama about the power of memory , The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey is unlikely to leave a lasting impression.

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Samuel l. jackson in apple tv+’s ‘the last days of ptolemy grey’: tv review.

The actor leads the drama miniseries based on the book of the same title by Walter Mosley, about a nonagenarian with dementia who is temporarily granted the ability to remember every moment of his life.

By Angie Han

Television Critic

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If it is true that, as Coydog (Damon Gupton) says in Apple TV+’s The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey , “all a man is, is what he remember,” then the Ptolemy Grey ( Samuel L. Jackson ) we meet at the start of the story is barely a shell of who he once was. A nonagenarian suffering from dementia, he can hardly make sense of what’s happening in front of him, let alone everything else that’s happened to him over the decades. But when a drug promises to temporarily restore all of Ptolemy’s memories — to make Ptolemy the fullest version of himself, going by Coydog’s logic — the question becomes what he’ll do with that rare gift.

It’s potentially rich territory for all manner of stories, from the intimate to the epic, and creator Walter Mosley (who also wrote the book upon which the six-episode miniseries is based) plucks a few different threads to weave together. Last Days is a little bit murder mystery and a little bit treasure hunt — but it’s most compelling simply as a drama, chronicling the (platonic) love that develops between Ptolemy and Robyn ( Dominique Fishback ), his teenage caretaker.

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Airdate: Friday, March 11 (Apple TV+) Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Dominique Fishback, Cynthia Kaye McWilliams, Damon Gupton, Marsha Stephanie Blake, Walton Goggins Creator: Walter Mosley

The first episode, directed by Ramin Bahrani, does feel like a straightforward drama, and a finely crafted one at that. Set before Ptolemy’s treatment, it delivers a haunting look at life with dementia. Past and present blur together: Ptolemy hears Coydog, the man who raised him, whispering in his ear in the present, or sees his late wife Sensia (Cynthia Kaye McWilliams) in the face of a passing stranger in the street. Shaky, blurred camerawork and distorted sound bring us into Ptolemy’s disoriented state of mind as he wanders into oncoming traffic or struggles to follow a conversation. When Reggie (Omar Benson Miller), his beloved nephew, dies late in the episode, Ptolemy’s grief becomes all the more wrenching because he keeps losing his grip on it: Leaving Reggie’s wake, he innocently asks where Reggie is.

Into Ptolemy’s shrinking world comes Robyn, an orphaned 17-year-old who needs a place to stay, and who’s willing to put in the work to make Ptolemy’s filthy, cramped apartment a livable home for them both. Though Robyn may be a supporting player in Ptolemy’s story, the writing and acting ensure she’s a fully formed character of her own. Fishback brings to Robyn the quiet magnetism that made her such a standout in Judas and the Black Messiah , and Mosley and Jerome Hairston’s scripts write her a life that extends beyond Ptolemy, even looping in a kindly love interest at one point. As Ptolemy regains his facilities, his bond with Robyn grows ever deeper, rooted in the care and generosity they show one another in a world that rarely affords much of either to them.

Having established the intimate interiors of Ptolemy’s life, Last Days adds in a touch of the mythic around the second episode when Dr. Rubin (Walton Goggins) presents his offer. The bargain that Ptolemy strikes is a Faustian one, underlined by his habit of referring to Rubin as “Satan.” The lucidity granted by the experimental treatment will last only a few weeks, after which Ptolemy’s mind will decline faster than before; in exchange, he’ll sign over his body (though not, Ptolemy makes a point to note, his soul). Their agreement places Ptolemy in the long history of risky medical experimentation performed on Black people — which in turn fits into an even more expansive one of white capitalists using and abusing Black bodies, as also glimpsed in frequently tragic flashbacks of Coydog and a very young Ptolemy (Percy Daggs IV) in 1930s Mississippi.

Rubin’s procedure transforms Ptolemy’s relationship with his past. “Now I remember the past instead of it remembering me,” he tells Coydog in a dream. Jackson is in fine form as all forms of Ptolemy: the fragile man unable to trust his own mind; the reinvigorated one resolved to make the most of his borrowed time; the steady younger one seen digitally de-aged in flashbacks wooing his beautiful wife. The toughness Jackson has built his career on registers here as the resilience of a man who’s lived — sometimes in harrowing pain, sometimes in dazzling joy, but lived . That Jackson’s been an icon for so long makes the casting feel especially appropriate. If Ptolemy is a man defined by who he once was, so is Jackson, for an audience that’s spent the past few decades watching him age and evolve onscreen.

But Last Days loses its footing a bit once Ptolemy starts to regain his. The restoration of his memories sends Ptolemy on two parallel quests. One carries on the lightly fantastical feel of Ptolemy’s agreement, sending him looking for the “treasure to save all the Black people” that Coydog entrusted to him decades ago. Neither the search nor the loot are terribly thrilling on their own, and the storyline works best as an excuse for Ptolemy to regale Robyn with stories about Sensia, each detail adding more texture to what had seemed at first like a glossy, perfect romance — and each new wrinkle filling in a more complete portrait of the man Ptolemy once was.

Less effective still is Ptolemy’s search for the person who murdered Reggie. The deadly stakes seem intended to give Last Days a bit of thriller momentum, and the series tries to set the tone early with an opening flash-forward to a lucid Ptolemy waiting by a table with a loaded gun. (It’ll be another five-ish hours before we circle back to what happened next.) But while Ptolemy’s determination is never in doubt, the mystery itself feels halfhearted. It’s so obvious who the killer is that the only reason to suspect someone else is that it seems  too obvious, and the resolution feels too pat to carry the weight that it should.

As the story progresses, the treasure hunt and the murder mystery take up more and more time and attention, with diminishing payoffs. A series that started out a heartbreaker ends in a shrug. Last Days  never drops to the level of boring — if nothing else, it’s always a pleasure to slip into the warm glow of Ptolemy and Robin’s friendship, or sit back and admire Jackson’s nuanced performance. But a question Robyn asks early in the series starts to feel more pertinent: “What if you waste what little time you have looking for answers that ain’t there?” she asks. Robyn’s worries proves to be unfounded, in the sense that Ptolemy finds exactly what he’s looking for. Turns out, though, that  Last Days is at its best when it’s not looking for concrete answers at all — when it’s just letting Ptolemy be.

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It is no secret that elderly Americans are treated only slightly better than lepers. Barely scraping by on Social Security checks and pensions (if that), old people are pushed aside because their buying power is limited to prescriptions and medical procedures. How often do we even see the elderly? Unless you’re related to an old person, you might only see them at the pharmacy, or at a voting booth, or if you happen to help one cross the street. Even if someone above the age of 60 has held onto a sharp mind, they may not have the physical health to match. 

Samuel L. Jackson stars as geriatric widower Ptolemy Grey in the newest Apple TV+ dramatic series, starting today, who has the opposite problem. Grey’s mind is succumbing to Alzheimer’s Disease at an alarming speed, but his body, his doctor tells Reggie Lloyd (Ptolemy’s great-nephew and caretaker, played with beautiful subtlety by Omar Benson Miller ), is stronger than men 50 years younger than him. Reggie has a wife and children, so he can only come by every now and then, which means a mournful dirge echoes from every nook and cranny of Grey’s Atlanta apartment. Stacks of ancient magazines cannot be disturbed because, as I myself have heard from the elderly hoarders in my life, he “likes them that way.” The toilet and bathroom sink are clogged and unusable. There’s a padlocked room, its door draped with a dirty sheet of canvas, that belonged to his late wife Sensia (Cynthia McWilliams) and mustn’t be opened. Decades of junk—folding chairs, Tampax boxes, empty tins—stand taller, and deeper, than Ptolemy himself, whose spine is hunched, whose grey hair and beard are matted, unwashed, springing wildly from his head. He sleeps on a settee in his living room, classical music playing feebly from a radio somewhere in the morass of his possessions, the TV news always on.

“The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey,” based on creator Walter Mosley ’s eponymous novel, casts an unflinching eye on the marginalization of Black America. Jackson imbues his portrayal of Grey with terrifying clarity. I have become so familiar with his supremely self-possessed roles that I didn’t realize the confidence inherent in his performances registers at an even more transcendent plane when he plays a helpless dying man. Every cry of despair, every struggle to remember names and faces, every motion—from the slightest tremor of Grey’s hands to his torso wavering—are just part of his life’s daily tragedies. There is no end to the list of indignities the elderly are made to suffer, but add to that senility, living alone, and racism. Local cops may not shove Grey up against a wall to pat him down, but they will collar his great-nephew Hilly ( DeRon Horton ), who was merely escorting Grey to the bank, and say, without cause, “Okay, you need to come with us.” 

But this story isn’t just about one elderly man. Grey’s family—a niece named Niecie (Marsha Stephanie Black ), her son Hilly; Reggie, his wife, and children, and a few other assorted relatives—have deposited caring for him at Reggie’s feet, and only take interest in him when rumors of Grey’s secret fortune abound. At a family member’s funeral, Grey meets Robyn ( Dominique Fishback ), the daughter of Niecie’s best friend, now an orphan, who now lives with “Auntie Niecie.” Robyn has reluctantly agreed to help take care of Papa Grey, as Ptolemy is known to his family. This arrangement changes rapidly when Robyn is kicked out of the house after Hilly tries to sexually assault her; she pulls a knife on him, and is self-possessed enough to tell her auntie, through tears, that she did nothing wrong. With nowhere else to go, Robyn moves in with Papa Grey. 

Fishback and Jackson’s chemistry is a marvel. The trust between them, tentative at first, grows naturally into a profound, abiding bond. For each of Jackson’s desolate sobs, Fishback counters with quiet gumption. Her body language is a storyteller unto itself: she at first finds Papa Grey quite odd, even exasperating. But her spine stiffens as she defends him, safeguards him from local crooks and greedy relatives. There is a resolute calm in her eyes and limbs as she scrubs the living daylights out of the filthy apartment. Jackson and Fishback fill the screen with pain that goes bone-deep, and joy that feels like a glorious victory. 

And now we arrive at the Walton Goggins appreciation portion of this review. I’ve written elsewhere that he’s the best part of whatever he’s in, and he is certainly impressive here in a supporting part as Dr. Rubin, an Alzheimer’s expert who is developing a cure for the disease. It’s a bit jarring to see Goggins in a normal part. He doesn’t burst into “Misbehavin’” (if you haven’t seen “The Righteous Gemstones,” you are missing out) or send spit soaring via his sewer-fresh insults (“Vice Principals”). Papa Grey meets with Dr. Rubin, who gives him some fantastical news. Though it is in its trial phase, this Alzheimer’s cure, in the form of a single shot, will completely restore the patient’s memory. Not just what they ate for breakfast, or what they watched on TV the day before. Everything , including painful memories of his uncle Coydog (Damon Gupton) and a passionate, albeit stormy, marriage to Sensia. There are some caveats: the patient will experience high fever, possibly regularly, and night terrors. Once the first shot wears off, the patient will be back at square one, feeling far more frantic and senile than they did before. There is, however, a second shot. Without it, Dr. Rubin says simply, the patient’s decline may accelerate. 

Goggins’ performances always feel like collaborations. He tunes his work so it is vivid enough to shine through, but flexible enough to play off others. That is what makes his scenes with Jackson so delightful. The newly rejuvenated Papa Grey unhesitatingly calls Dr. Rubin “Satan.” Dr. Rubin isn’t offended. Goggins isn’t trying to Patch Adams his way through the role. His candor is unapologetic; his words direct but not terse. The inclines of Goggins’ head, even the intonation of his speech, give both actors room in which to present two sides of an argument. A white doctor, medical indemnity paperwork in hand, and a seemingly impoverished Black man, who gets his marbles back, if only briefly, going toe to toe with each other, neither hostility nor contempt coloring their actions. They need each other, and Jackson and Goggins deliver tenfold on this partnership.

The drawbacks of the series, sadly, come down to the directing and editing, both of which often seem to hail from dramas of the late 1990s and early aughts. But because “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey” isn’t flashy, and lacks the voyeurism of something like David Simon ’s assessment of Black America in “The Wire,” it accommodates the plot receding into the background so character studies can take over. In the first few minutes of the pilot, I jumped when the camera dwelled for a split second on a paperback copy of Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie . I have met only a half dozen people who care as much as I do—or have even heard of—about arguably the figurehead of American naturalism in 20th century literature. Sister Carrie does have a plot, but it is first and foremost a character study. Carrie follows her heart, struggles against an industrializing America, and eventually gets almost everything she wants—but still feels alone, unable to even pinpoint what it is she wants, just that she feels alienated from the life and gaiety around her. It’s the first time I’ve witnessed the DNA of Dreiser’s creation in a modern story on television. I hope it’s not the last.

Whole series screened for review. Starts on Apple TV+ today, March 11th.

Nandini Balial

Nandini Balial is a film and TV critic, essayist, and interviewer.

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Film credits.

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey (2022)

300 minutes

Samuel L. Jackson as Ptolemy Grey

Omar Benson Miller as Reggie

Dominique Fishback as Robyn

Walton Goggins as Dr. Ruben

DeRon Horton as Hilly

• Hanelle M. Culpepper
• Guillermo Navarro
• Debbie Allen
• Ramin Bahrani

Writer (based on the novel by)

• Walter Mosley

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• Hilda Mercado
• Shawn Peters
• Leo Trombetta
• Craig DeLeon

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6 Things To Know About The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

Samuel l. jackson stars in a story about the love between a dementia patient and his unlikely caregiver, adapted from walter mosley's highly-acclaimed novel..

TAGGED AS: Apple TV Plus , Apple TV+ , Drama , streaming , television , TV

Despite Samuel L. Jackson ’s lengthy acting career — from his role in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing to his many appearances as Marvel character Nick Fury — he has yet to lead a television series. With Apple TV+’s The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey , that is about to change. Jackson stars and executive produces the project, which follows the story of Ptolemy Grey, an elderly man struggling with dementia who’s living in solitary squalor, and the loved ones who offer support for (or take advantage of) his deteriorating condition.

Inspired by the critically acclaimed book by Walter Mosley ( Devil in a Blue Dress ), who also executive produced the six-episode limited series, the program features a talented ensemble that includes Dominique Fishback ( Judas and the Black Messiah ) as his young caregiver Robyn; Damon Gupton as Coydog, Ptolemy’s uncle and mentor in flashbacks; Omar Benson Miller as his beloved nephew Reggie; Marsha Stephanie Blake as his mistrusting niece Niecy; Cynthia Kaye McWilliams as his one true love Sensia; and Walton Goggins as Dr. Rubin, the man whose experimental treatment gives Ptolemy a temporary sense of clarity and a new (albeit brief) lease on life.

Jackson spoke about the long-gestating project during the 2022 Television Critics Association Winter Tour and, weeks later, during the show’s official press day, Mosley and members of the cast spoke with Rotten Tomatoes about the deep importance of the show’s subject matter, the use of memory as a storytelling tool, the unique love story that resides at the show’s core, and much more. Here are six things you should know about The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey .

1. This is a passion project for Samuel L. Jackson.

(Photo by Apple TV+)

Since first picking up the book in 2010, Jackson has been focused on adapting Walter Mosley’s story. For the actor, the tale of an older man who is grappling with dementia and is haunted by the memories of his past hit close to home. Jackson said he felt it imperative to shine a light on the issues of dementia and mortality, under the specific lens of Alzheimer’s disease, as many people who struggle with the condition end up being without agency, voice, and understanding.

“I’m from a family where I felt like I was surrounded by Alzheimer’s,” Jackson revealed. “My grandfather, my uncle, my aunt, my mom, there are people on my father’s side who have Alzheimer’s. I watched them change, deteriorate, and become different people over the years. And being able to tell their story, to understand that things in their past are more their present, and understand how to convey that to people, and give an audience an opportunity to know that they aren’t the only people who watch their loved ones deteriorate that way. The memories that they have aren’t in a place that they should abandon. It’s OK to have that, and it’s OK to remember. It’s OK to live in that place. You are still a worthwhile individual even though a lot of people discard you.”

2. Jackson has been preparing for this role for a decade.

Considering the amount of time they worked to get this series made, it’s unsurprising to think that Jackson’s inner work as an actor was constantly being exercised. Those wheels have been spinning for some time, and while Fishback revealed her method for bringing characters to life involves journaling and creative introspection, Jackson said he’s not at all a method actor when it comes to stepping in front of the camera.

“I kind of do all that work before I get to work so that when it’s time for the work to happen, I just kind of flow into it,” Jackson said. “I’ve seen this series for about 10 years in my head, so when it was time to do those things, I just kind of turn on the emotional asset that I’m able to access and do it. And then when I get off, I talk to my agent on the phone about things that I need to do later on.”

3. Adapting the novel to television was no easy feat.

Throughout the development process, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey took on different shapes. As Mosley explained, adapting the book to a television show was always the plan. But it was a challenging one.

“It’s hard for people in television; they have a very specific idea of what they want to do and this doesn’t really fit into it,” he said. “I think we were at HBO for a while, and HBO wanted to make it a movie. We didn’t really want to make a movie, because movies are short stories. They’re not the larger stories that need to be told. We talked about doing a series with them, but that wasn’t what they were doing right then. And so we went off and but we just kept working, we kept talking about it, and there would be times that we didn’t do anything.”

During the TCA panel, Mosley delved a bit deeper into the elements that make his show vastly different from the entertainment currently found on TV.

“I don’t know of any show like this one, There are so many things differently — the idea of just concentrating on having a whole experience around a person who’s experiencing dementia in a television environment, episodic. What he goes through, how he responds, what he does. And then on top of that, Black characters going through this experience that — usually if you start dealing with characters outside of what people consider the mainstream of America, they have particular roles that they’re playing, but we had a completely different experience. It’s not a movie, which would’ve been too short for this, and it’s not exactly television, either. It’s a kind of a streaming ocean that you embark upon. And so it was a great deal of fun doing it, and it felt very different.”

4. Apple TV+ was the perfect home for the show.

From trying to make it into a movie, to parting ways with HBO, Mosley admits it was a long journey to finding a team that could stay true to his vision and bring the show to life on his terms. And by all accounts, Apple TV+ was the perfect home for the project.

“They were like, we do different things,” he revealed. “Everybody else does the detective stories, the war stories, the fairies flying around, we’re gonna do something different. And they liked it. We put it together. And that’s it.”

McWilliams echoed his sentiments: “Apple is doing a fantastic job at separating themselves as a streaming platform. That really is when they call it ‘an Apple Original.’ They’re doing things in an original way. They’re allowing each thing to have its own art, its own sort of world. It’s like an art-house platform, in my opinion. I just love it. I really like what they’re doing and I think this was the perfect place for it.”

5. There’s an unconventional love story at its core.

There are two love stories that anchor Ptolemy’s experience throughout the show’s six-episode run: that of his romantic bond with Sensia in the past, and his current connection with Robyn in his present. While their relationship is ultimately brief, the young caregiver comes in and changes his life for the better, and his mentorship and acceptance alter her own path for good. It’s an unconventional love story and one that keeps the story anchored from beginning to end.

“I think that love is always an interesting thing, because it’s different for the two different people feeling it,” Mosley said. “If they’re not feeling the same thing, they’re feeling different things that work together very well. She needs somebody not only to love her, but to respect her and to basically, in that term, give her respect. He needed somebody to help pull him back into the world. He was out there, he was drifting way out on the horizon, and he needed somebody to pull him back in. In turn, she needed somebody to need her. That’s a way that she could reveal herself. And so is it a love story? Definitely. But it’s not Romeo and Juliet. It’s not that love story. It’s two people who deeply care for each other and see potential in each other.”

6. It will resonate with audiences from all walks of life.

Jackson’s passion for telling this story and honoring his own family is a perspective shared by each member of the cast. And considering how relatable the conflicts featured in the series are, audiences from all walks of life will surely connect with the struggles Ptolemy and his loved ones face throughout the chaos of his mental condition.

“I think one of the reasons it’s gonna resonate with people is because everyone either has, or will deal with, loss, grief, illness, deterioration, and decay, either in themselves or in someone that they love,” Miller explains. “And I think that everybody will find somebody that identifies with that, possibly, with the character that I play, the Reggie character, who is Ptolemy’s nephew, who has become his caretaker, somebody who he grew up idolizing and mentoring. And in the book, you learn about the various things that Ptolemy taught Reggie, he was a cool uncle to him when he was a child. And now the tables have turned, and Ptolemy has outlived his peer group age-wise, and the responsibility is somewhat neglected, but it has fallen to Reggie, and it’s something that he takes very seriously in taking care of his uncle in the midst of taking care of his own life.”

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‘The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey’ Review: Samuel L. Jackson and Dominique Fishback Shine in Apple TV+ Drama

Leave it to a streaming service to bring Walter Mosley’s bestseller about a man with dementia and his much younger caregiver to life

“The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey” is proof of how widely streaming services are broadening Hollywood content. Without an Apple TV+, it’s highly doubtful this limited series featuring a platonic familial story revolving around an elderly Black man and teenage Black girl would ever be made. This is despite the fact that the show is an adaptation of a 2010 book from acclaimed multi-genre author Walter Mosley, whose credits include “Devil in a Blue Dress” and the John Singleton-created FX series “Snowfall.” In fact, it took roughly a decade for producer and star Samuel L. Jackson and his team to get the series made. And it would have been tragic to be deprived of the stellar performances by both Jackson and the increasingly impressive Dominique Fishback (“Judas and the Black Messiah”).

As Ptolemy Grey, an elderly Black man battling dementia, Jackson has never been in finer form. But Fishback stands toe to toe with the giant as the teenage Robyn, yet another testament to her remarkable gift. Watching the two at work is a joy.

Jackson’s Ptolemy is a man in disarray. A hermit with memory and reality challenges whose only real contact with the outside world comes from his nephew Reggie (Omar Benson Miller), the only family member who genuinely cares about him and his well-being. When Reggie stops coming by, other relatives who have written him off and believe him to be not of sound mind, try to exploit him. Then Robyn, the daughter of his niece’s good friend, finds herself with nowhere to go after her mother’s death, and she ends up caring for Ptolemy. The quasi-grandfather-granddaughter bond the two form is one rarely depicted on screen in storylines for any race; for Black actors, it is even scarcer. 

But “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey” is not just about the relationship of two people at opposite ends of life’s spectrum — one nearing the close of his and another truly jump-starting hers. There’s a lot of action and backstory to devour. When Robyn takes Ptolemy to an appointment Reggie made with a specialist, things get beyond interesting. Ptolemy takes a drug that temporarily restores his memory and is transformed. While he is not completely the man he was before, we see intoxicating flashes of him in the prime of his youth: from his tough young life in Mississippi to his love affair with his beloved and unconventional wife.

Early in the series, Ptolemy is disheveled and somewhat shrunken. In contrast, Ptolemy 2.0 is virile, commanding and magnetically charismatic. Determined to get to the bottom of his nephew Reggie’s exodus from his life, Ptolemy also becomes a detective, which brings more than a hint of danger. That transformation not only magnifies Jackson’s tremendous depth as an actor but also paints a multidimensional portrait of the character, giving Ptolemy a dynamism so often denied Black male characters of any age on any screen.

While Robyn’s backstory is not quite as rich, she is far from idle and endures a few challenges of her own. Through her relationship with Ptolemy, she finds a purpose, and a sense of belonging that she has sadly never experienced. Upon their initial meeting, she desperately needs a place to stay and takes charge to make his highly unsanitary environment livable. Over time, that apartment becomes their home and they become family. And that sparks jealousy among Ptolemy’s blood relatives, who begin to challenge and undermine Robyn, accusing her of things to which she is simply not capable.

“The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey” is not without its missteps. At times, the pacing can be too rushed in some scenes and too protracted in others. There are also some narrative details that don’t add all the way up. Ultimately, however, the series provides a spectacular showcase for two of Hollywood’s finest actors.

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The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey: A Novel Paperback – November 1, 2011

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• Print length 277 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Riverhead Books
• Publication date November 1, 2011
• Dimensions 5.4 x 0.75 x 8.25 inches
• ISBN-10 159448550X
• ISBN-13 978-1594485503
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Riverhead Books; First Edition (November 1, 2011)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 277 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 159448550X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1594485503
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.6 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.4 x 0.75 x 8.25 inches
• #233 in Fiction Urban Life
• #420 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
• #769 in Psychological Fiction (Books)

About the author

Walter mosley.

Walter Mosley is one of America's most celebrated and beloved writers. His books have won numerous awards and have been translated into more than twenty languages.

Mosley is the author of the acclaimed Easy Rawlins series of mysteries, including national bestsellers Cinnamon Kiss, Little Scarlet, and Bad Boy Brawly Brown; the Fearless Jones series, including Fearless Jones, Fear Itself, and Fear of the Dark; the novels Blue Light and RL's Dream; and two collections of stories featuring Socrates Fortlow, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, for which he received the Anisfield-Wolf Award, and Walkin' the Dog. He lives in New York City.

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TV and Streaming | ‘The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey’ review: Samuel…

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Things to do, tv and streaming | ‘the last days of ptolemy grey’ review: samuel l. jackson stars in a tale of secrets and buried treasure.

Jackson serves as executive producer and star of “Ptolemy Grey,” which is based on the 2010 novel from the author made famous by the Easy Rawlins mysteries. There are mysteries aplenty in this story, and a legacy of murderous racism.

At heart, though, the present-day narrative is a wish fulfillment heartwarmer, stretched a bit and a little slack in the middle. A lot of what’s best about “Ptolemy Grey” is pretty simple and consistently rewarding: the interplay between Jackson and Dominique Fishback, who plays the teenage caregiver of the title character.

Alone with his addled thoughts and memory-impaired psyche, Grey (after a prologue) is introduced as he’s living day-to-day amid a blizzard of mementos, newspapers and fragments of his troubled past in a second-story Atlanta apartment.

He’s 91 in Mosley’s book, though certainly younger in the adaptation. Grandnephew Reggie (Omar Benson Miller) looks in on the man he calls “uncle.” He’s not long for the story, though, and tracking down Reggie’s killer is high on Grey’s to-do list, with the clock running.

Fishback, so good in “Judas and the Black Messiah,” among others, does wonders with a role that in lesser hands could come off as cardboard-saintly. She gets the old man’s life in order and acts as a skeptical sounding board as he decides whether to undergo a radically experimental drug treatment for dementia (Walton Goggins plays Dr. Rubin with a “waaaaait a minute” air that suggests the character should be named “Dr. Tuskegee”). Grey will get his memory back in full, for a while, but the probable trade-off is his dementia’s return.

There’d be no story if he didn’t take the chance, of course, and Grey has his reasons. They involve a long-buried, barely recalled treasure of sorts. Temporarily “cured,” Grey’s brain is flooded with images, often grisly and haunting, from his earlier years in the Deep South. Damon Gupton plays an old family friend and Grey’s sometime guardian, Coydog, in flashbacks and dream sequences.

“Ptolemy Grey” takes Jackson from 80ish to dashing, digitally realized early middle age, where we see how he and his tempestuous true love Sensia (Cynthia Kaye McWilliams, excellent within limited demands) met and married. Much of Grey’s long life doesn’t make the cut here in limited series form. There are times when the episodes could actually benefit from an additional strand or two.

The acting buoys all. It’s well-directed, with Ramin Bahrani getting things off to a confident start in episode one, Debbie Allen handling episode two; Hanelle Culpepper taking care of episodes three and six; and Guillermo Navarro, four and five.

Mosley took on much of the adaptation chores, and the scenes come to life when the characters — especially the ones at the center, played so vividly by Jackson and Fishback — converse and reflect in ways transcending functional dialogue. At its best “Ptolemy Grey” lets the audience know it’s listening to a writer with a singular ear for vernacular, and dramatic poetry. See it for Jackson and Fishback, in particular, and for what they can accomplish when plot takes a back seat to character.

‘The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey’ — 3 stars (out of 4)

Rating: TV-MA (violence, language)

Running time: Six episodes, approximately 51/2 hours total

How to watch: First two episodes premiere March 11 on Apple TV+

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

[email protected]

Twitter @phillipstribune

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The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey review: Samuel L. Jackson gives a career best performance

This poignant drama is some truly great television..

What to Watch Verdict

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey is a poignant, slow-building drama that raises the bar for centering Black characters and weaving truth and fiction into great television.

Samuel Jackson’s Ptolemy Grey is a career best

Dominique Fishback and Samuel Jackson’s chemistry carry the day

Vibrant visuals and costuming

Some of the side characters feel a bit underutilized

Slightly uneven pacing

Note: This review contains some spoilers for The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey .

What would you do if your mind began failing before your body? What would you give to recover your vitality and a lifetime of memories even for a short time? Crime novelist Walter Mosley’s ( Devil in the Blue Dress ) buried these questions at the heart of The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey . 

It’s a story about a man who chooses to trade his future for a temporary dementia cure so he can solve the murder of his great-nephew Reggie (Omar Benson Miller), protect the young woman who steps in as his caretaker (Dominique Fishback) and fulfill a promise to his long-deceased brother. Then fade away, on his own terms, leaving no unsettled business behind. 

The new Apple TV Plus six-episode limited series — and Samuel L. Jackson’s longtime passion project — brings this storyline to vivid life through time jumps, semi-lucid dreams and an unconventional father-daughter dynamic as Ptolemy recovers his memories and settles his affairs.

This adaptation keeps Mosley’s plot largely intact, but its minor revisions to Mosley’s timeline add urgency and breathe life into The Last Days of Ptolemy in ways that let its characters’ personalities shine.

Historical fiction with Black people tends to zero and linger over moments of trauma and forget to let its characters live. Rather than merely marking time and trauma, as Ptolemy recovers his memories in vibrant detail the series shifts through the decades of his long life in a way that translates into a compelling memoriam.

But his remembrances do way more than simply mark time or wallow in pain. There’s a purpose to each moment, good or bad, he recalls. Ptolemy Grey is a man who’s often fallen short of his own expectations for himself and there’s no escaping that. As his mind clears, this clarity permits him to process the state of his family and the world around him. 

Jackson’s portrayal of Ptolemy as a man who pauses his slide into oblivion relies not on his hallmark bombastic delivery. Rather, his Ptolemy embodies both the dry wit and whimsy of a once keenly intelligent man and the visibly unsettling uncertainty and depressive exhaustion sometimes noticeable in older people struggling to hold on to their facilities.  

A reinvigorated Ptolemy understands that his vitality will be short-lived. But even as he pushes to uncover what happened to his great-nephew, it's his deepening relationship with his young caretaker, Robyn, that takes center stage and carries the day.

Dominique Fishback ( Judas and the Black Messiah ) is a wonder as a 17-year-old Robyn struggling to find her way. With a tragic backstory of her own, Robyn struggles to find a place to belong. Unlike the Robyn in the book, Fishback brings an emotive edginess to the role that makes for a more dynamic character and a captivating portrayal of brittle vulnerability and youthful perseverance. Jackson couldn’t get a better scene partner. Especially when it comes to setting the stage visually. She conveys deep feelings with a glance of a shoulder into a room or bouncing glee at receiving the gift of a bed to sleep in.  

With the experimental treatment from a white research scientist (Walton Goggins) Ptolemy takes, this series offers a sharply drawn, if mostly silent, indictment of how Black bodies are sought as sacrifices to the "greater" scientific good. Goggins brings an awkwardly earnest, if detached, energy to his dynamic with Jackson that ensures a topic fraught with pitfalls gets treated with the respect and wariness it deserves. 

Fishback’s experience stands as the silent witness to both the desperation or despair that prompts people to agree to being test subjects and the way those running the trial seem callously removed from their pain. But by making it clear that Ptolemy not only understands the risks and assumes them willingly, his decision is an empowered one. Ptolemy chooses to burn bright even though he knows it’s not possible to burn for long. 

A persistent thread throughout Mosley’s books is the not-so-benign neglect of Black elders by family and the community. Last Days starts with a deeply befuddled Ptolemy who lives in squalor and tracks time between visits by his great-nephew in cans of beans eaten. The series inserts a scene between Ptolemy and Reggie as its opening sequence that makes both his isolation and neglect by his kin markedly clear from the outset. 

The remainder of the worldbuilding draws on minor but pivotal moments — like Ptolemy being attacked by an addict in the street trying to rob him, again — to juxtapose his relationship with his family prior to the murder with the drastic change Robyn brings to his life after stepping in to care for him. 

It’s easy to write these small touches off as background noise, but each offers a mirror to judge the actions of both Ptolemy and the series' secondary characters against at each milestone on his journey. As he gains lucidity and it becomes clear that his prior hermetic state isn’t due to his family’s inability to intervene, his decision to stand in the breach for both his relatives despite their disregard is almost stunning. There’s the sacrifice you make because it’s the right thing to do and then there are the ones you make because you love the people you’re making it for.  

There’s a subtlety to this adaptation of The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey , which makes space for a tangled narrative that digs into many-layered “what-ifs” and turns them into a richly drawn story about grief, sacrifice, love and acceptance. This is one crime tale less about the "whodunit" and more about what are you willing to do once you know. Ptolemy Grey is a man on a collision course with a fate he’s intent on walking into eyes wide open.

The first two episodes The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey are now available to stream exclusively on Apple TV Plus .

Ro is a Rotten Tomatoes approved film/tv critic, writer and host on several of the MTR Network's podcasts. She's a member of the San Diego Film Critics Society and the Online Association of Female Film Critics. She's a former culture columnist for San Diego CityBeat (may it rest in peace) with a serious addiction to genre fiction, horror and documentaries. You can find her sharing movie and book recs and random thoughts, on her podcast I Talk Sh!t and Read or in her newsletter, Shelf Envy.

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Book review: ‘The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey’ by Walter Mosley

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With his 30th novel, “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey,” the fascinating Walter Mosley not only returns to top form, but also extends once again the boundaries of the hard-boiled suspense genre in which his best work always has been rooted.

No other writer of the 58-year-old Mosley’s generation has done quite as much to keep the style of Hammett and Chandler from lapsing into mere mannerism. His popular Easy Rawlins mysteries — probably his best books until now — extended the genre’s affinity for social realism and added a dimension of historical recovery in portraying African Americans’ vital but bittersweet life in postwar Los Angeles.

In “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey,” Mosley returns to contemporary Los Angeles with a daring, beautifully wrought story that incorporates elements of allegory, meditative reflection and the lilt of lyric tragedy. For obvious reasons, we can never know the confusion and loss of intellectual faculties that so often attend old age, but in this novel Mosley gives as convincing an evocation as you’re likely to encounter in literature. The result is an unexpectedly profound novel of the subtle links between memory and identity, of the difference between forgetting and having the past stripped from you, of what it may mean to be lost, first to those around you, then to yourself.

Mosley’s unlikely protagonist is Ptolemy Grey, a 91-year-old African American living as a near-recluse in a filthy, rented apartment in one of South L.A.’s meaner neighborhoods. His flat is cluttered with trash and the material fragments of a life dissolving in dementia. Ptolemy’s beloved second wife, Sensia, is decades dead; roaches patrol his kitchen counters; his bathroom hasn’t worked for years and he sleeps under a table in the living room, perhaps because his bedroom is stuffed with a pack rat’s junk, perhaps for darker reasons. Even he is no longer quite sure. His real companions are a classical music radio station and an all-news television channel that he keeps on simultaneously, day and night.

For some time, Ptolemy’s only link to the outside world has been his grandnephew Reggie, but when the young man is killed in a drive-by shooting, the old man is left to the care of far less scrupulous relatives. At Reggie’s funeral, however, Robyn Small — a niece’s teen lodger — offers to take on his care. She is the book’s other protagonist and one of the most successfully realized females in Mosley’s fiction. Robyn’s practical affection, which begins with an agonizing cleaning of Ptolemy’s Hogarthian flat, reawakens the old man to both love and the desire to reclaim his own identity. Here, for example, is Robin cleaning his filthy bathroom:

“Once she found an old sepia photograph way down under the sink. It was the picture of a huge brown woman holding the hand of a skinny, frowning little boy.

“ ‘Who is this, Mr. Grey?’ she asked, coming out to see him.

“Ptolemy had set his folding stool right at the door so that he could see everything the teenager was doing.

“ ‘Oh, don’t throw that away. No, no.’

“He took the crumbling photograph in his hand. It had once been five inches by eight but now the corners and sides had been eaten away by damp rot. The woman’s face was water-stained, as was the bottom half of the boy’s body. He held the picture gently as if holding a wounded creature.

“ ‘That’s my mother,’ he whispered, ‘and her son … me.’

“ ‘Let me put that away someplace safe so we can take it to the drug sto’ copycat to see if they can make a good print of it,’ she said, taking the fragile memory from the man’s thick black fingers.”

Partly because of his growing affection for Robyn, partly because her soothing care has reawakened vague recollections of a great secret and its attendant obligation, Ptolemy enters into what can be called only a Faustian bargain. Through a social worker, he meets a physician who is conducting experiments with a drug that relieves the symptoms of senile dementia. The drug’s side effect, unfortunately, is death, though for a few weeks, the old man will experience a return to complete lucidity. (Mosley has been steeped in black history since his days as a student at L.A.’s legendary Victory Baptist Day School, so it’s impossible not to see in the doctor’s offer Mosley’s own awareness of all those black men unknowingly subjected to medical experiments through the years.)

Ptolemy accepts the drug, and gradually we get to know his history not just in drifting fragment, but in chronology. Many lives, in fact, are recovered — a childhood in rural Mississippi where he saw a boyhood friend burned to death in a house fire and a favorite uncle lynched; service in World War II; migration to Los Angeles; two marriages; work delivering ice and as a county maintenance man. There is also a great secret, a treasure kept in trust that now may provide for Robyn’s future and that of many others. First, though, there is Reggie’s killer to track down and a final redemptive act of violence to perform.

As he writes to Robyn, “So if something should happen and I don’t make it past this afternoon, I want you to know how much I love you and I am in love with you. You deserve the best I can offer and that’s why I’m sitting here with a pistol under the cushion and a gold doubloon on the coffee table. You might not understand. You might think that it don’t have a thing to do with you and you don’t want me acting a fool like this…You might say why live a whole life being careful and then throw it all away at the last minute?” He has his reasons — and she may be the most important one.

At the heart of this remarkable new novel is a tragic wisdom — universal in implication, Mosley-specific in expression — summed up by Ptolemy’s Mississippi boyhood friend Coydog: “The great man say that life is pain…That mean if you love life, then you love the hurt come along wit’ it. Now, if that ain’t the blues, I don’t know what is.”

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'Happy Face': Khiyla Aynne & Benjamin Mackey Round Out Series Regular Cast As Production Begins; David Harewood To Recur

In the series, jumping off from Moore’s true-life story, Happy Face (Quaid) is an incarcerated serial killer who also is Melissa’s (Ashford) once-beloved father. After decades of no contact, he finally finds a way to force himself back into his daughter’s life. In a race against the clock, Melissa must find out if an innocent man is going to be put to death for a crime her father committed. Throughout, she discovers the impact her father had on his victims’ families and must face a reckoning of her own identity.

Gupton plays Elijah, who was convicted of murder in 1995, when he was in his early 20s, and he’s been on death row in Texas ever since.  Elijah has always maintained his innocence, but it’s not until the Happy Face Killer gets involved in his case that the world begins to listen.  Two months out from his execution, Elijah must grapple with a feeling he let go of a long time ago: hope.

Tamada portrays 15-year-old Eva, Hazel’s childhood best friend, who has drifted away from Hazel and into the cool girl clique.  But Eva is a true crime aficionado, and when she learns that her old friend has a link to the Happy Face Killer, she and the rest of the cool girls invite Hazel into the fold.  

The eight-episode first season of  Happy Face , produced by CBS Studios in association with King Size Productions, iHeartPodcasts and Semi-Formal Productions, will premiere exclusively on Paramount+ globally in 2025.

Gupton can be seen in Apple’s comedy series The Big Door Prize, which is currently airing its second season. He also starred opposite Samuel L. Jackson in Apple’s limited series The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey. Known for his role as Stephen Walker on Criminal Minds , Gupton’s other credits include Showtime miniseries Super Pumped and The Comey Rule, as well A&E’s Bates Motel. On the big screen, he was seen in La La Land and Whiplash, among others. He’s repped by Harden Curtis Kirsten Riley Agency, SMS Talent and Brookside Artist Management.

Tamada is known for her breakout role as Claudia Kishi in Netflix’s The Baby-Sitters Club. Additional television credits include her most recent role as Ty Leein Netflix’s live action adaptation of  Avatar: The Last Airbender. She also stars opposite Lyon Daniels, Noah Cottrell, and Christian Slater in Disney+’s live-action series The Spiderwick Chronicles.  In film, Tamada portrayed Maya in Paramount’s action feature  Secret Headquarters opposite Owen Wilson and Michael Peña. Additional credits include To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You and its follow-up To All The Boys: Always and Forever, Lara Jean , and a lead role in Netflix’s family film, The Main Event. Tamada is represented by da Costa Talent Management, Echo Lake Entertainment and The Framework Collective.

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