PICK OF THE WEEK
Assassination Of Gianni Versace
Wednesday, BBC2, 9pm
Following the success of the Bafta-winning The People v OJ Simpson, the second season of Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski’s American Crime Story strand zones in on the events surrounding the 1997 murder of the Italian fashion designer and the subsequent bungled hunt for his killer, the Californian escort, fantasist and multiple murderer Andrew Cunanan. While The People v OJ dealt with America’s changing attitudes to race, played out as a pitch-black soap opera, Assassination — written by Child 44 and London Spy’s Tom Rob Smith — deals with issues of fame, class and gay lives in modern America and unfolds at a chilly pace. So, while the performances are uniformly excellent, with Edgar Ramirez and Penelope Cruz both haunting and commanding as Gianni and Donatella, there is a desolate despair to almost every scene, especially those dominated by Glee’s Darren Criss, whose depiction of Cunanan succeeds almost too well at capturing the killer’s fame-obsessed sociopathy. It’s a bleak watch, but stick with it. It gets bleaker.
Andrew Male
The week’s best TV: Assassination Of Gianni Versace; Pets — The True Cost; Dispatches; Sunset Boulevard
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