I watched all 100 episodes of Nip/Tuck, convinced with every riotous instalment that it could not possibly get more morally corrupt. Every week I was proved wrong as the show always scraped new lows in reprehensible behaviour. And after six seasons of scandal and silliness, its producer Ryan Murphy proved he was only just getting started, with a prolific output ever since (and Netflix is his next home).
His dramas have sometimes been hit (Feud) and miss (Scream Queens) but they are impossible to ignore. And his incredible American Crime franchise, is unmissable, beginning with the multi-award winning The People v. O.J. Simpson and now on Foxtel’s showcase The Assassination of Gianni Versace.
This is the international TV drama of the year so far for me. Over nine episodes, it effortlessly recreates the most opulent of worlds, with Versace’s over the top mansions, and serial killer Andrew Cunanan (played by an actor Ryan Murphy discovered for Glee, Darren Criss). And despite it covering some of the creepiest territory yet (and that’s saying a lot, given Murphy’s wildly uneven American Horror Story), this is totally mesmerising from start to finish. It opens with the gunning down of Versace and then bounces around in time but, by showing every murder first and then following it with Cunanan’s twisted machinations, it helps make the tale even more twisted.
Murphy is never afraid to cast the biggest of stars, all of whom make you forget who they are. OK, maybe Cuba Gooding Jr wasn’t a great OJ Simpson, but others (like Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange as Bette and Joan) were totally convincing.
This time round, you will believe that Penelope Cruz is Donatella Versace and Ricky Martin will break your heart as Gianni’s partner. Australian audiences, used to seeing him on The Voice, won’t see anything they recognise here – he will amaze those fans.
Which brings us to fellow Voice judge, Delta Goodrem, who nailed Olivia Newton-John’s singing voice but could not get the rest of the illusion. The second part of Olivia: Hopeless Devoted To You, which one wag on rightfully described as “Hopelessly Convoluted”, was a ratings disaster, leaving all to declare, yet again, that the Aussie biopic is over.
And in that format, maybe it is. Covering an entire lifetime is getting old and, if the story needs to be set all over the world, that’s when we really get into trouble. There is not one second of The Assassination of Gianni Versace that is not dripping in authenticity or lushness, and Aussie productions cannot match multimillion-dollar budgets like that. It’s no longer good enough to re-create the climax of Grease, originally filmed at a high school oval in Los Angeles, at Luna Park in Melbourne.
Tag: review
The Best TV Shows of 2018 (So Far)
19. The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (FX)
Anthology series. 9 episodes.
The second iteration of Ryan Murphy’s true crime anthology is not nearly as mesmerizing as The People v. O.J. Simpson, maybe because it doesn’t have David Schwimmer saying “Juice” repeatedly. Still, this one, which focuses on what led the serial killer Andrew Cunanan (played by Darren Criss) to slay the fashion designer (Édgar Ramírez, with Penélope Cruz, pictured, as his sister, Donatella) in 1997, is a fascinating study of a total psycho who loved cheesy dance music and should appeal to fans of, well, American Psycho.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Deadly Women and Live Sport – new this week, 21 May, on Foxtel
Top of the list is the highly anticipated series The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story that chronicles the murder of the famous fashion designer in 1997. Édgar Ramírez, Penélope Cruz and Darren Criss lead an all-star cast in this thrilling series that starts with the horrific crime in question and then goes back to see what lead up to it. Created by television powerhouse Ryan Murphy, it’s unmissable.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Deadly Women and Live Sport – new this week, 21 May, on Foxtel
TV writer, director and producer Ryan Murphy has become American television’s most valuable man recently signing a five-year, $300 million deal to create TV exclusively for Netflix. But the creator of ‘Nip/Tuck’, ‘Glee’, ‘American Horror Story’ and now the ‘American Crime Story’ anthology series still has a few more shows to come out before he switches to Netflix. One of them is ‘American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace’. | 21 May 2018
“The viewer has to make a decision about commitment”
“Sometimes you are sucked into something and you want to watch all of it. I just watched the first episode of The Assassination of Gianni Versace, and I will certainly watch every episode of that. It was absolutely superb.”
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American Crime Story
Network: FX
Ryan Murphy and writer Tom Rob Smith had a tough act to follow with the second season of American Crime Story. Veteran biopic writers, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, had already delivered one of the best seasons of television of all time with their work on The People Vs. OJ Simpson which had been released during the run-up to the election, and when the realities of race and gender in America were a daily conversation.
While the second season of the show didn’t receive the same universal critical acclaim or ratings buzz that the show saw in season one, it was no less affecting as a cultural critique.
If season one, more or less, was about race and gender, season two, more or less, was about the LGBTQ experience and the different roads that Gianni Versace, Andrew Cunanan, Jeff Trail, and Lee Miglin were forced to take.
By telling all of these different stories, Murphy and Smith ask us to reflect on the gay experience in America, both in terms of how far we’ve come, and in terms of how far we still have to go.
What’s on TV: American Crime Story, Save Me and more
AMERICAN CRIME STORY: ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE
(Showcase on Foxtel — Thursday, May 24 at 8.30pm; also on iTunes)
After the runaway success of People vs OJ Simpson, Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story series is back with an exceedingly watchable second instalment, this time tackling the murder of designer Gianni Versace.
Gunned down in front of his Miami mansion by a serial killer, the death shocked the world and celebrities including Elton John and Princess Diana attended his funeral in 1997.
But the story of his killer, Andrew Cunanan, is lesser known and that’s what this series is really about. While the marketing has been trumpeting its A-list cast — Penélope Cruz, Edgar Ramirez and Ricky Martin — most of the show’s nine episodes are focused on Cunanan, played here with incredible depth by Glee star and Murphy alum Darren Criss.
Cunanan, an openly gay man, had already murdered four people by the time he stood outside Versace’s home. A pathological liar with delusions of grandeur, Cunanan’s emotionally tortured soul was emblematic of the “national crime” Murphy captured in the DNA of this series: Shame.
Played out in reverse linearity, the show peels back the layers of Cunanan’s actions and twisted psychology before bringing it back to the climax — it’s an incredibly effective exercise in empathy. It also happens to be some of the most phenomenal TV you’ll see this year. Don’t miss it.
My Friend Dahmer: is it time to stop glamorising the serial killer?
My Friend Dahmer is about as unglamorous a serial-killer movie as you could hope for: it doesn’t even feature any murders (not of humans, at least). Instead, it lays out the warning signs that all was not right with the teenage Jeffrey Dahmer: his unstable parents, his repressed sexuality, his high-school victimisation, his unwholesome interest in anatomy.
And yet, by its very existence, the movie can’t help but glamorise its subject, who went on to variously rape, murder, dismember, violate and cannibalise his 17 male victims. It doesn’t matter if you portray them as damaged souls or psychopaths; you’re still adding to the legend. Faced with this realisation, much of our current serial-killer fare has cast realism aside to embrace the glamour. That was certainly true of Ryan Murphy’s miniseries The Assassination of Gianni Versace, whose glitzy Miami settings, A-list cast and 90s couture made for a more appealing watch than such grubby classics as, say, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Meanwhile, Zac Efron is set to play Ted Bundy in a big-screen thriller that suggests that, with the right breaks, Bundy could have had a fruitful career as a lifeguard. And who knows what Quentin Tarantino’s forthcoming Manson flick has in store? He’s described it as “probably the closest to Pulp Fiction that I have done”.
Post-Hannibal Lecter, we prefer our killers cultured, intelligent and presentable, like Dexter, American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman or Kevin Spacey in Seven. That dangerous glamour also rubs off on the actors. It never looks bad to have a serial-killer role on your CV, especially if all that’s on it so far are wholesome teen roles. That was the case with Ross Lynch, AKA Young Jeffrey Dahmer, who’s been largely a Disney kid up to now. Versace’s murderer Andrew Cunanan was played by Darren Criss, previously best known for Glee, just as Efron was once indelibly associated with High School Musical.
Which brings us to the best current take on serial killers: David Fincher’s Netflix series Mindhunter, detailing the early history of FBI psychological profiling. Our wide-eyed fed hero, Holden (Jonathan Groff, another Glee graduate), is almost starstruck by the killers he interviews, including Ed Kemper and Richard Speck. He considers Manson the ultimate challenge. But unlike previous serial-killer thrillers, including Fincher’s own Seven and Zodiac, Mindhunter examines the troubling mix of awe and disgust with which we regard these murderers. In the final episode, Holden visits Kemper in hospital. “Why are you here, Holden?” Kemper asks. “I don’t know,” Holden replies. Kemper then hugs him, as he finally realises how totally messed up things have become. We’re right there with him.
My Friend Dahmer: is it time to stop glamorising the serial killer?
Critic’s Choice: TV picks for May 20-26
THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE: AMERICAN CRIME STORY
New series ***½
Thursday 8.30pm, ShowcaseRyan Murphy’s work always lists toward the camp but if it was ever appropriate it’s in the latest edition of American Crime Story, exploring the 1997 murder of Gianni Versace. Once again Murphy has attracted a stellar crew, from writer Tom Robb Smith to Edgar Ramirez as Gianni and Penelope Cruz as Donatella Versace. The production values are lush. And the plot, which focuses chiefly on the hunt for the killer, is as complex as it is suspenseful.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story
Rating: 4½ out of 5 stars
The opening sequence of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is exquisitely presented.
Adagio in G Minor strings accompany the striking visuals of 1997 Miami (as used so dramatically in works such as Platoon and The Elephant Man).
It is a summer’s morning and Italian fashion designer Gianni Versaci (Édgar Ramírez) is enjoying the luxury of his lavish beachfront villa. Brimming in ornate interiors, classic furniture, artworks, flowers, pool, staircase and staff, there is colour bursting at every turn. It’s as if Tuscany has been transported onto American soil.
Meanwhile 27 year old Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) wades out into the ocean and screams at the top of his lungs. Clearly overwrought with feelings of anxiety, he soon throws up in a public toilet before -or possibly after- a catastrophic event.
Not long after Versace’s partner Antonio (Ricky Martin) readies for a round of sport and Florida tourists request Gianni’s autograph during his daily walk, Cunanan comes face to face with the designer at the gates to his villa and shoots him dead. It’s like a moment of high opera, and sets the scene for Ryan Murphy’s latest anthology series.
But how did the players arrive at this crescendo? The opening chapter of this 9 part series flashes back to Cunanan’s meeting with Versace in a heady gay disco in San Francisco. Ambitious, deceptive, handsome, Cunanan is determined to befriend the designer via whatever elaborate ruse he can fabricate. One gets the impression that nothing he says is real, so it becomes a question of whether he believes his spin or is knowingly lying through his teeth.
But Versace is entranced and the two forge the start of a 7 year friendship.
In the present -the narrative is constantly juxtaposed with the past- Cunanan is delirious with glee at his assassination but on the run from local police. Antonio is heartbroken by the death of his partner whilst Donatella Versace (Penélope Cruz) arrives to take control. Rigid and seemingly unmoved by the loss of her brother, she seizes control of the company, even displaying little sympathy for Antonio.
Tom Rob Smith’s script (based on the book Vulgar Favors by Maureen Orth) highlights crass pop culture crimes with one quick-thinking observer snapping a Polaroid of a near-dead Versace being loaded into the ambulance and soon demanding top dollar from arriving media; another moment from autograph-hunters has to be seen to be believed….
Whilst The People v. O.J. Simpson spent far more time on the courtroom and the Prosecution, Versace is heavily invested in why Cunanan took such fatal action, and what ithe saga says about American society.
Darren Criss, whose romantic work in Glee saw him become a Ryan Murphy favourite, takes a dark detour as the complex, malevolent Cunanan. He has the lion’s share of the narrative here, wooing and extinguishing the relaxed, gifted designer played gently by Édgar Ramírez.
Initially Penelope Cruz and Ricky Martin are chess players in the bigger game, so the series will need to develop them beyond the opening chapter -thankfully there is much to work with.
Visually this is a splendid piece. Some of the scenes, such as Cunanan sitting on the beach, are so artfully captured they resemble paintings. The canvas for such a heightened piece, including the actual Versace residence, gives cinematographer Nelson Cragg plenty to work with.
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