Unlike The Alienist, the second installment to American Crime Story, the Emmy-winning FX anthology series helmed by Ryan Murphy, is anything but inert. In fact, The Assassination of Gianni Versace is downright lurid and seedy — like the headlines of supermarket tabloids that drool over crimes that merge celebrity gloss and gore.
It’s also unrelentingly grim and stomach-turning, focusing mostly on the killer of the Italian fashion icon, Andrew Cunanan (a very creepy Darren Criss), and the various murders he committed before Versace (Edgar Ramirez, a dead-ringer). One was Cunanan’s former lover, David Madison (an affecting Cody Fern), a Minneapolis architect; another was a friend of Madison’s, Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock, in a brief cameo). Watching Criss’ Cunanan — a glib, name-dropping gigolo turned cross-country killing machine — senselessly stab, shoot and bludgeon one person after another is not my idea of grand entertainment. The show is so awash in darkness, it would make an antidepressant overdose seem uplifting.
Also, the all-encompassing concentration on Cunanan makes the series title a misnomer: by the fourth episode, very little of Versace, sister Donatella (Penelope Cruz, with a hoot of an Italian accent), Versace’s lover Antonio D’Amico (a sensitive Ricky Martin) or their retinue is seen. That’s a shame and a mistake. The series could have used more larger-than-life Versace glamour in flashbacks to counter the chronic misery.
No one really knows what set Cunanan off. Murphy doesn’t succeed in making me want to know why; I’m just glad he’s gone. I feel sorry for the surviving families of the victims, these people unlucky enough to fall into this psycho killer’s orbit — or to be, as in the case of Versace, his fixation. Serial killing is sad stuff, and not for the squeamish.
On TV, It’s Raining Men: An Alienist and a Versace
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