TV review: The Assassination Of Gianni Versace is all about gay shame

THE ASSASSINATION OF GIANNI VERSACE: AMERICAN CRIME STORY, premieres January 17 and airs weekly on FX on Wednesdays at 10 pm. Rating: NNN (Entertaining)

Ryan Murphy’s latest series is gruesomely intimate.

In recounting serial killer Andrew Cunanan’s cross-country murder spree in the lead-up to the fashion designer’s brutal shooting death, The Assassination Of Gianni Versace doesn’t shy away from showing exactly how his five victims met their violent ends.

In July 1997, Cunanan shot Versace twice in the head at point-blank range in broad daylight on the steps of his palatial Miami home. Murphy’s camera lingers over the bullet holes in his cheeks as he lies dead on a gurney, and later shows embalmers covering them with makeup. Another man-made orifice, a bullet hole in an eye socket, is the subject of a sweeping camera shot.

When another victim is brutally beaten in the head with a claw hammer, the show manipulatively cuts to his mother leaving messages on his answering machine at the exact moment of his death.

The nine-episode series – the second edition of Murphy’s American Crime Story anthology – uses the Versace murder to probe internalized homophobia, and it’s an opportune moment to revisit the shame-wracked Cunanan. Last year, U.S. president Donald Trump introduced a tax bill cutting services for LGBTQ people. Meanwhile toxic masculinity, gay misogyny and closeted Hollywood stars are simmering topics online and in the news.

Similar to how season one of American Crime Story, The People V. O.J. Simpson, used the football player’s murder trial to echo current conversations about race, this second instalment treats the Cunanan manhunt as an extension of conversations around law enforcement failing LGBTQ people.

But this is a Ryan Murphy series, so the social commentary comes with a heavy helping of sadistic horror gore, 90s gay club anthems, gratuitous nudity, luxury real estate (producers filmed in Versace’s actual South Beach home), era-specific wigs, wardrobe and props, and a supporting turn by pop star Ricky Martin.

The Assassination Of Gianni Versace is sensational enough to be addictive episodic TV, but the intimacy of its violence is rarely matched emotionally. Instead, its fascinating story falls victim to an over-reliance on cheesy genre trappings, an under-directed performance by lead Darren Criss and lazy violations of its story-in-reverse framework.

Based on the 1999 book Vulgar Favors by Vanity Fair journalist Maureen Orth, the series opens with Versace’s murder and then reverses the story, Memento-style, retracing Cunanan’s spree to his formative years as a boarding-school-educated golden child in La Jolla, California.

This case is well documented, so the drama for Murphy, his team of directors and writer Tom Rob Smith (London Spy, Child 44) comes from trying to figure out why Cunanan did what he did, what made his victims vulnerable to his sociopathic charms and the wider social context of the mid-90s.

The Murphy-directed season opener immediately sets up Versace (Edgar Ramirez) and Cunanan (Criss) as opposites. The murder is depicted in a grand, near-wordless eight-minute overture soundtracked by opera music. We follow Versace as he casually strolls to a newsstand while an agitated Cunanan cradles a pistol on a nearby beach.

Versace, it is later shown, is a hard worker whose brush with ear cancer emboldened him to come out of the closet and design clothes for women he imagines to be proud and strong. Cunanan is a highly intelligent, status-obsessed compulsive liar who uses sex to gain wealth and kills gay men, seemingly to out them.

After the first two episodes, the show reduces the Versaces – including Donatella (Penélope Cruz) and Versace’s lover, Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin) – to supporting players who sporadically return to provide contrast in episodes that focus on the other victims.

Since Cunanan took his own life without explaining his motives, Smith and Murphy must take dramatic liberties, but the view always feels outside-in. Though Criss looks the part of a crypto-conservative 80s preppy killer, he gets stuck in an American Psycho caricature mode.

This is partly due to edits, camera framing and B-movie music designed to deliver easy shocks. Other sequences are weightier, eschewing dialogue and taking time to unfold. There’s nothing wrong with pulpy horror and drama, but the producers can’t seem to settle on a tone. And by withholding Cunanan’s motivations until the final episodes, we’re left desperately searching Criss’s timid performance, which never evolves, for some sense of inner life.

The most tragic parts of the story come in the middle episodes devoted to Jeffrey Trail (Finn Wittrock) and David Madson (Cody Fern), two friends who fatally fall into Cunanan’s orbit. The show leans heavily on reductive flashbacks that not only slow down the main story, but take the onus off the actors to convey the complexities of shame and self-hatred.

What the show does more successfully is capture the class-blind nature of institutional homophobia. In one scene, police discover a body and immediately resort to stereotypical theories. These sex-obsessed conversations continually sideline investigators, creating a sense of high stakes that’s far more impactful than a creepy music cue.

Another highlight is Judith Light, who effectively steals the series in episode three. From the moment she drums her manicure on a countertop, we can tell this performance is about more than a high-camp wig. She plays Home Shopping Network (yes, the Toronto-based TV channel) beauty expert Marilyn Miglin, whose real estate tycoon husband, Lee (Mike Farrell), was Cunanan’s third victim.

She returns home to find something amiss, and soon her facade of hard-fought dignity starts to suggest a tragic mix of denial, love, compassion and anger. Light’s subtle performance is helped by the deliberate, almost real-time pacing of the sequence. (Perhaps David Lynch’s extended floor-sweeping in Twin Peaks: The Return is starting to have an influence?)

But in a show about parallels, the similarities between Marilyn and Donatella are largely left unexplored. Like Marilyn, Donatella must put grief aside to deal with business, police and media. And like Light, Cruz gets an extended intro – albeit more glamourous – that follows her chauffeured journey to Versace’s home, past the bloody steps. Sadly, as the story reverses, we don’t come to learn how the workaholic Donatella is able compartmentalize emotions (at least in the first eight episodes made available for review).

Interestingly, her character comes to represent the ways capitalism contributes to repression and shame. Late in the series, Donatella warns her brother to take the fashion house’s retail expansion and potential public offering into consideration before coming out.

“The rock stars, the actors, the royalty whose endorsements we cherish – they might not want to be associated with us,” she says, adding that designer Perry Ellis faced a backlash after going public with his AIDS diagnosis a decade earlier. “After that, people stopped buying his clothes.”

“Some people,” her brother shoots back.

(Incidentally, in advance of the show’s premiere, the Versace family issued a statement denouncing producers for entertaining Orth’s claim the designer was HIV-positive when he died. Rumour or not, two decades on, some people still think it shameful to be HIV-positive.)

It’s a worthy scene. But, too often, The Assassination Of Gianni Versace just can’t resist hitting its audience over the head.

A trick of fashion: The bait and switch of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace”

Gianni Versace’s legacy, his brand, evokes the art of commanding attention. Subtlety is not in the label’s DNA, and even at its most understated, hints of opulence sneak in to signal the glorification of luxury. Gaudiness is a virtue in the house of Versace, and FX’s “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” premiering at 10pm on Wednesday, extravagance leaps off the walls and inflames every inch of the hallways, tiles and stained-glass windows.

Aesthetics drive Ryan Murphy’s latest anthology installment as much as the story itself. More, actually, in some instances. One might argue said focus thematically aligns with the titular subject, but in making that assertion a person would betray an ignorance of the series’ true aims.

Fact is, Versace himself has less of a presence in the nine-episode limited series named for him than the man who murdered him, Andrew Cunanan. Accept this bait-and-switch and the squeamish implications of it, and you may find much to appreciate in this far-from-perfect examination of a crime remembered foremost for its brazen nature as opposed to any lasting resonance on its culture.

“The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is based on journalist Maureen Orth’s 1999 book, “Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History.” Her reporting on Cunanan and Versace originally was published in Vanity Fair, and it is a meticulously rendered profile of Cunanan’s boundless hunger for wealth and status as well as his unmatchable skill as a fabulist.

Tom Rob Smith, who created the excellent series “London Spy,” channels Orth’s style and knack for detail into the script, particularly taking to heart Orth’s summation of Cunanan’s story as “a singular study in promise crushed.”

“The Assassination of Gianni Versace” seems to pore over every inch of that study in tandem, somewhat, with the designer’s biography and how those who loved him fell into conflict and struggled to take the reins of what he built in the aftermath of his death. But the tale can be more accurately thought of as a crime story told in reverse, working its way backward to the beginning of two lives, one destined for great renown and the other careening toward infamy.

Cunanan gunned down Versace in broad daylight on the front steps of his South Beach villa in 1997. Murphy, who directed the first episode, captures the designer’s savage murder before the title card appears.

Like the series itself, the homicide is presented as an unexpected interruption of calm; the camera tracks Versace (Oscar Ramirez) in his final moments engaging in ordinary acts — awakening, eating breakfast served to him by impeccably clad servants — in an extraordinary fashion.

Through Ramirez’s embodiment of the designer’s quiet sensitivity, Versace becomes a living work of assured serenity. Cunanan (Darren Criss) is his opposite, a dazed young man in a t-shirt and shorts at the beach, contemplating the pistol he’s holding. Soon he’s screaming at the rolling waves.

Versace was the final victim in a string of murders Cunanan committed in a cross-country spree, taking the lives of former friends and strangers alike. But the fashion icon’s place in history was assured long before his death and far less defined by it than, say, O.J. Simpson’s association with his crime.

Besides, “The People v. O.J. Simpson” is a tough act to follow. The series opening installment benefitted from the lasting cultural relevance of the case and subsequent trial.

Though it took place only a few years prior to Versace’s murder, the narrative surrounding the O.J. saga holds cogent parallels to modern conversations about race, gender, and fame in America, and the way each is filtered and failed by an asymmetrical justice system. Simpson was one of America’s favorite celebrities, too — a star first and a black man second, some believed, until his arrest and darkened mugshot on the cover of Time magazine told us differently.

Murphy would have us view the circumstances leading up to and resulting in Versace’s murder as another parable of systemic injustice, positing that law enforcement’s thorough botching of the hunt for Cunanan, who was on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list by the time he made it to Miami, can be blamed on the rampant homophobia of the era.

Just because the creator of a piece declares that it stands for something does not mean that it does. While episodes show Versace and Cunanan facing bigotry in their separate lives, the police drama thread barely touches upon that idea. A subplot involving a team of Miami detectives portrayed by Dascha Polanco, Will Chase and Jay Ferguson is auxiliary at best, presented as if to let the audience know that yes, law enforcement was aware of the situation.

Every other aspect of the series favors its central players with such extremity as to obscure the procedural elements almost completely. But that’s the nature of this work; perhaps in a nod to its subject, every visual detail of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is immaculately curated, from Judy Becker’s attention-grabbing set design to its exemplary performances.

Not a hint of John Travolta weirdness is present in this cast. Penelope Cruz is a flawless stand in for Versace’s sister Donatella, and Ricky Martin, playing Versace’s longtime partner Antonio D’Amico, is absolutely stellar. Even the cameos are outstanding, particularly Max Greenfield, utterly transformed into a rangy flophouse dweller befriended by Cunanan in the killer’s final days.

And while Ramirez turns in a robust performance that captures the quiet sensitivity of the designer, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” places Darren Criss front and center.

Don’t get me wrong, the confident mélange of outrageous embellishment, quivering insecurity and frigid creepiness Criss exerts to create Cunanan is mesmerizing. His portrayal is such a coup that the viewer may soon overlook that they tuned in to this series expecting one man’s story and instead spending much more time with the man who killed him. Cunanan’s various relationships with his other victims Lee Miglin, Jeffrey Trail and David Madson receive a similar level of consideration as his stalking of Versace, and a late-season episode devoted to Cunanan’s relationship with his manipulative father (Jon Jon Briones) is as insightful as it is chilling.

Memorable fashion is often a triumph of artifice if not an unmitigated success. In that respect, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” hangs together imperfectly, and its lines don’t quite flow with the level of unified elegance as its predecessor. Calling to mind the designer’s signature medallion, it is its own Medusa, beauty and horror in one long complicated gaze. It doesn’t match its predecessor’s power to transfix the audience, but it is definitely worth seeing.

A trick of fashion: The bait and switch of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace”

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ Review: A Very Different ‘Story’ Yields Uneven Rewards

Virtually everything about the lengthy title “” is misleading. For one, it’s less of a crime story — in the “Law & Order,” cops and courtrooms sense — than a biography of Andrew Cunanan, the man who murdered at least five people over a three-month span in 1997. One of those people was iconic fashion designer Gianni Versace, but his relevance to Cunanan’s life, and thus the series overall, is largely symbolic — he’s the American dream, and he’s still damaged.

To the show’s credit, these shifts aren’t problematic or even the most jarring twist on Season 1’s “The People vs. O.J. Simpson.” “Versace” is told in flashforward; it starts with Versace’s death and then works its way back in time through Cunanan’s other homicides and even into his childhood. This structural choice never delivers the emotional impact one would hope and does lead to some unnecessary repetition, but it’s a bold choice that should keep viewers on their toes.

Sometimes the new season feels as deceptive as its title: a sequel in name-only that doesn’t live up to its predecessor’s accomplishments despite similarly lofty ambitions. Written predominantly by Tom Rob Smith, the “London Spy” creator who was not part of “The People vs. O.J. Simpson,” the follow-up season is a very different tale. But just when you start to drift away, “Versace” tightens the tether; be it a few moving performances or subtle scenes that carefully convey greater meaning, there’s enough here to warrant attention — be it for a Versace story or not.

If “The People vs. O.J. Simpson” was told from the lawyers’ perspective in order to expose prejudices in the judicial system, then “Versace” is predominantly seen from Cunanan’s point of view so viewers can better understand the difficulties faced by gay men in ’90s America. Whether you were a poor, powerless man on the run, or a rich, worshiped company chair, the oppression, risk, and fear remains the same. “Versace” admirably (and more effectively) explores how Cunanan’s victims formed connections with him and why Cunanan may have finally snapped, even if it’s a less cohesive and richly detailed season than “The People vs. O.J.”

Given the set-up, Versace’s death is the climax of Cunanan’s life, so the series has to work a bit to bring Versace’s narrative back into the mix as it starts working back through the killer’s past. Though the first two episodes are largely dedicated to Cunanan’s time in South Beach and his not-so-chance first encounter with Versace, each episode is dedicated to a new victim.

Episode 3, “A Random Killing,” travels to Chicago to get to know closeted real estate tycoon Lee Miglin. Episode 4, “House by the Lake,” moves to Minneapolis to meet architect David Madson. Episode 5, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” is the best of the lot, as it delves into a naval story focused on Jeffrey Trail.

Within these hours, the story often strays from Cunanan’s viewpoint as it digs further and further into each new character. That gives “Versace” a looser, more haphazard feeling than “O.J.,” but it’s far from a mistake with performances like the ones Cody Fern (as David) and Finn Wittrock (as Jeffrey) provide. They, along with a briefly seen Max Greenfield, are the highlights, though they don’t exactly top the cast list.

Edgar Ramirez makes for a commanding Versace, exuding confidence in a largely quiet depiction, and yet his understated turn doesn’t undermine later scenes where Gianni is scared. Cruz’s presentation of his sister, Donatella, is less consistent, less lived-in, but still gripping. That being said, the most perplexing aspect of Donatella and Gianni has nothing to do with their actors’ respective choices; it’s that producer Ryan Murphy chose to cast two Italian characters steeped in Italian heritage and surrounded by Italian decor with two Hispanic actors.

Onscreen, the most cumbersome entry is Darren Criss’ take on Cunanan. Wide-eyed and speaking with the high-pitched voice of a liar, Criss is asked to carry the series, but he only has so many weapons in his arsenal. His stare dulls and his voice grates. Rather than develop over time, it’s as if Criss figured out who Cunanan was from the get-go and stuck with it. There’s little difference between the high school outcast in Episode 7 and the gun-toting murderer from the premiere.

Such regularity plays into the deadened serial killer stereotype “Versace” should be trying to avoid. (It also doesn’t help alleviate any concerns over another stereotype: associating homosexuality with insanity.) And it’s not even that Criss is bad; he has moments of raw power, he just doesn’t elevate the material the way Sarah Paulson, Sterling K. Brown, and David Schwimmer did for “The People vs. O.J. Simpson.” Such comparisons only hurt “Versace,” but if you can avoid them and take it in as not only a new chapter, but a new book, then this new “Crime Story” should satisfy.

Grade: B-

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ Review: A Very Different ‘Story’ Yields Uneven Rewards

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ preview: Ryan Murphy sidelines big names for rising stars

Premiering January 17 on FX, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is showrunner Ryan Murphy’s follow-up in the “American Crime Story” true crime anthology series to “The People v. O.J. Simpson.” That debut season two years ago won 10 Emmys, including three for acting, but not for big names Cuba Gooding Jr., David Schwimmer and John Travolta. It was instead career-redefining work by rising stars Sterling K. Brown, Sarah Paulson and Courtney B. Vance that lit up the awards circuit. “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” pulls that same bait-and-switch.

Oscar winner Penelope Cruz features heavily in marketing materials as Gianni Versace’s sister, but appears in just half of the eight episodes made available for the press to preview (out of nine total for the season). Between the second and seventh episodes, she has only one scene. Grammy winner Ricky Martin is similarly absent as Gianni’s boyfriend. Emmy nominee Edgar Ramirez has top billing in the eponymous role, but spends most of the first episode on a gurney and tallies only one more episode than Cruz and Martin — by cameoing in a dream sequence.

“The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is really the story of serial killer Andrew Cunanan, played by Darren Criss. Cunanan is the only character to appear in every episode, with the show working backward from 1997 through his life and murders. The first two episodes explore Cunanan’s connection to Versace, with subsequent episodes expanding on previous victims — with only random and sporadic asides to the Versace clan — and the eighth episode delving into Cunanan himself, going back to 1980 to depict his childhood.

This procedural approach provides excellent standalone acting showcases for guest stars Jon Jon Briones (episode 8), Mike Farrell (episode 3), Cody Fern(episode 4), Judith Light (episode 3) and Finn Wittrock (episode 5). Fern and Wittrock are in just as many episodes as main cast members Cruz and Martin, but their appearances fit more organically into the narrative. Wittrock has already been Emmy-nominated for a standout supporting performance in a Ryan Murphy anthology series — “American Horror Story: Freak Show” three years ago.

Criss also got his big break acting in television under Murphy, on “Glee,” later writing a song for its series finale, earning the musical its sole Emmy nomination for Best Original Music and Lyrics. A compulsive liar, charming manipulator and homicidal psychopath, Cunanan is the role of a lifetime and Criss is perfect casting, down to his half-Filipino background.

Emmy nominees for “M*A*S*H” and “Transparent” respectively, Mike Farrell and Judith Light play a married couple, but neither will be eligible for Emmy consideration because they do not appear in five percent of the total runtime of the season, a prerequisite for the Best Movie/Limited Supporting Acting categories after Ellen Burstyn was nominated for a 15-second cameo in the 2006 movie “Mrs. Harris.” Also worthy of recognition, yet ineligible is Max Greenfield, unrecognizable in the opening two Miami-set episodes as Cunanan’s short-term boyfriend. Greenfield is an Emmy nominee for the sitcom “New Girl” and was previously directed by Murphy on “American Horror Story: Hotel.”

‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ preview: Ryan Murphy sidelines big names for rising stars

The Assassination of Gianni Versace is a disturbing and constantly shifting true-crime thriller

“It was a political murder. It absolutely was. This was a person who targeted people specifically to shame them and to out them and to have a form of payback for a life that he felt he could not live.”

That’s Ryan Murphy, executive producer of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (starts Wednesday, FX Canada, 10 p.m.). The nine-part series, which follows on Murphy’s extraordinary and award-winning The People v. O.J. Simpson, is a true-crime thriller of outstanding suppleness in storytelling.

In his remark about “political murder,” Murphy was responding to a quibble about the title. See, the series is really about Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss), who killed Versace and four other men. Much of it is about Cunanan scheming and lying his way into people’s lives and then murdering them. Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez) was just the famous one. It’s also about the hunt to find Cunanan, tracking his movements and the inept attempts to connect him to multiple crimes.

As such, the drama, which has some stunning visual opulence, has multiple themes and threads. It can be an agonizing, thrilling and disturbing thriller to watch. It opens with Versace beginning his day in his lavish Miami Beach mansion and switches to Cunanan loitering on the beach nearby, presented to us as a shady character with some unknowable but obviously dark intent on his mind. Then he shoots Versace on the steps of that mansion and flees.

From there, the drama shifts and turns constantly, but is never unintelligible in its twisting approach to the entire story. And entirety is what Murphy is aiming for. He also has two central themes – first, the assassination of Versace made Cunanan’s murders a celebrity story that left the other victims forgotten and, second, he nourishes the idea that lies and the putting on of masks are human actions that cover up a core duplicity at the heart of awful human frailty.

The series is essentially Cunanan’s story but we learn a great deal about Versace and his family. He is portrayed as an earnest craftsman who is mostly shy but, aware of his celebrity, given to an extrovert sexual ostentation that he kept hidden inside the closed world of his friends and lovers. There is also a mordant, underlying suggestion in the treatment of Versace’s private life – in 1997, it was still common for a gay man to keep much of his life hidden.

The structure of the storytelling means that the viewer first meets Cunanan’s victims when they are dead, and then goes back into his relationship with them and reveals exactly who they were. This isn’t conventional TV drama in the sense that empathy for a character is created and then the shock of their death at the hands of a madman is a tragic climax.

Instead, as in The People v. O.J. Simpson, Murphy is prodding and probing at the viewer’s casual assumptions about what they are seeing. It’s an unsettling but admirable approach. As Murphy has done before, he draws great performances from actors who might be considered lightweights. Actor and singer Criss, best known as the dreamboat Blaine Anderson on Glee, is remarkable as Cunanan, the preppie who has a deeply exaggerated self-importance and hides a murderer’s heart under his smiling, happy-to-meet-you surface. There is also a fabulous, deeply poignant performance by Mike Farrell, forever associated with his role on the series M*A*S*H, as the rich and closeted gay Chicago real estate developer Lee Miglin.

Miglin was actually Cunanan’s ideal lover – a rich older man who would finance the young man’s extravagant tastes. But Miglin became yet another victim of the killer’s rage and loathing of those more successful than him. Singer Ricky Martin, whose acting has so far been limited to a two-season sitcom and a soap opera, pulls off a powerful performance as Antonio D’Amico, Versace’s long-time companion. Penelope Cruz plays Versace’s sister, Donatella, as a steely protector of all things Versace after the assassination.

And one of the most important roles is given to Judith Light, who plays Lee Miglin’s wife, Marilyn, a woman whose stony denial of her husband’s sexuality, no matter what evidence is presented, is emblematic of an entire society’s denial that a gay culture exists.

Murphy brought in Tom Rob Smith (who wrote London Spy) to adapt Maureen Orth’s book, Vulgar Favors, about the Cunanan murders, for the series. The Versace family and company has complained, without seeing the series, that it distorts Gianni Versace’s life. They say Orth’s book is “full of gossip and speculation.” Orth was at the TV critics tour to endorse the series and defended the accuracy of the book. “I would say my sourcing in the book is 95 per cent or more on the record, and I talked to over 400 people, and so, so many things that you might think were made up are definitely not made up. They happened.”

Like The People v. O.J. Simpson and Feud: Bette and Joan, this new work from Murphy sets out not to revise history but to bring a fresh perspective to the recent past. In the case of the O.J. Simpson trial, Murphy’s point was to lay bare the impact of tabloid-TV journalism on the American justice system and to put O.J. Simpson’s status in the context of rampant racism in the Los Angeles police department. In Feud, he emphasized that great women actors are considered disposable and irrelevant at a certain age, both then – the 1960s – and now. Here, he’s laying bare the agonies of the closeted, hidden life that so many gay men endured as recently as the 1990s.

“The first American Crime Story was very much a courtroom potboiler,” Murphy says. “And we looked at sexism and racism. This second season is a manhunt thriller. We’re not glamorizing the Cunanan story, and we never want to do that. We deal with everybody who was affected, not just the people who were killed, but also the relatives, the siblings. What he did was very, very destructive, and the reason why he did it, I think, was the homophobia of the day. It still persists and that is something really topical.”

There are many striking scenes in The Assassination of Gianni Versace, some of them gorgeous and some troublingly sinister. But there is one scene that really lingers.

When Gianni Versace tells Donatella that he is going to admit publicly that he is gay, she is afraid the admission will kill the business, the brand. It didn’t. This fierce, richly layered drama series is about the one malignant, vengeful force that did, in the end, kill Versace, the man.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace is a disturbing and constantly shifting true-crime thriller

Into the Life of a Madman with “American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace” | Demanders | Roger Ebert

2016’s “American Crime Story: The People vs. OJ Simpson” was a television event, one of the most accomplished series of that entire year. With an incredible ensemble, creator Ryan Murphy proved he had yet another act in him after the popularity of his “American Horror Story” started to wane. Of course, people started asking about a follow-up before “People” was even over, and Murphy revealed that he was working on a version of “ACS” that would chronicle the disaster around Hurricane Katrina. On paper, it sounded like one of the most ambitious mini-series in TV history, and it may still be as it will now reportedly be the third season of Murphy’s creation. After having some trouble getting that one into production, Murphy rallied his collaborators and went to Florida, producing this week’s “American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace.” The result is a less sprawling, ambitious piece than we may have gotten in New Orleans (also when compared to season one) but it’s still an impressive drama, one that plays with themes that have fascinated Murphy throughout his career. Featuring less star power than “OJ” but a few stellar performances of its own, “Gianni Versace” will be a tougher sell to casual viewers, but those who go along for this journey into the world of a sociopath will be dramatically rewarded.

On July 15, 1997, Andrew Cunanan shot fashion legend Gianni Versace outside of his home in Miami, Florida. He was already on the FBI’s Most Wanted list at the time, having committed four other murders around the country on his way to Florida. After extensive investigations, a clear motive was never completely found, allowing Murphy and his writers to dive deep into Cunanan’s past with a bit of creative license.

We do know that Cunanan was a chameleon and a con artist. He would regularly change his appearance and tell people elaborate stories about his background and professions. Murphy captures him as someone obsessed with image but hollow on the inside, and he contrasts him with a designer who created imagery from his soul. “Assassination” is at its most ambitious when drawing these parallels about the power of reputation and image. Andrew says in episode six, “For me being told no is like being told I don’t exist.” She may be speaking about the success of the family fashion line but Donatella Versace practically echoes Andrew the next episode when she states, “We must be talked about or we are nothing.”

“The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is structured in a very daring way, even if I’m not yet 100% sure that structure adds anything thematically. It essentially travels backwards, episode by episode. So, we open with the murder of Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez) and the events that followed thereafter as the cops searched South Florida for Andrew, played by Darren Criss. As the season progresses, we see how Andrew and Gianni got here, like reading the chapters of a book in reverse. For example, episode three gets us to the murder of Lee Miglin, a Chicago power player who Andrew killed just before leaving for Florida. Episode four, the best of the eight sent for review, features Andrew and his unrequited love David Madson (the nearly show-stealing Cody Fern, a very-likely future star) on a nightmarish trip that would end in David’s death, just before Andrew went to Chicago to find Lee. And so on. By the time we get to episode eight, directed by Matt Bomer, we’re in Andrew’s childhood, learning about how his father’s behavior may have influenced his own. And this reverse journey finds time to intercut episodes of Gianni’s life, such as coming out to The Advocate with his partner Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin), or clashing with his sister Donatella (Penelope Cruz) about a business decision.

Narratively, a lot of “Gianni Versace” rests on the shoulders of Criss, and he doesn’t always carry the weight. Playing a rage-filled, morally hollow character like Andrew Cunanan would be difficult for any actor, but there’s an inconsistency to this performance, especially in the early episodes. Again, I’m not sure the reverse chronology helps the entire production other than by the time we see Andrew in episode four speaking to Jeff Trail and David Madson, we know he’s insane. However, it creates a disjointed timeline overall, which makes the character harder to understand or for Criss to play. And it leads to the feeling that the overall thematic cohesion of the piece is just out of reach. So while there are plenty of great moments, scenes, even episodes to recommend, I’m not sure it all ties together.

Ultimately, watching “American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is a series of very Murphy-esque gives and takes. It is a show that feels both bloated and gorgeous. Yes, there’s a part of your brain that will say, “This might have worked better as a movie of two hours instead of a series of nine,” but another, bigger part will be enjoying the performances and production values enough not to care. In that sense, it’s similar to the fashion world it attempts to capture—so pretty you don’t care how much it costs.

Into the Life of a Madman with “American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace” | Demanders | Roger Ebert

Homophobia Examined in ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Where Darren Criss Shines

“The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” which airs Jan. 17 on FX, is not what you think it is.

It’s the second installment in the true crime anthology series, co-created by out producer Ryan Murphy, following the massive hit “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” which debuted in 2015. That season centered on “The Trial of the Century” – the O. J. Simpson murder case – while examining police brutality, classism and racism in America. Not only was “The People v. O.J.” a well-made, well-acted and entertaining show, it’s social context, relating the past to the present on a number of issues still relevant today, skyrocketed the drama into a league of its own.

Murphy and Co. don’t have an easy task following up “The People v. O.J.” This time around they tackle the murder of out Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace, who was shot dead on the front steps of his Miami mansion in 1997 by Andrew Cunanan. Like first season of “ACS,” “Versace” has an incredible star-studded cast, including brilliant performances from its main crew: Edgar Ramirez as the titular designer, Penelope Cruz as his sister Donatella, Ricky Martin as his partner Antonio D’Amico and Darren Criss as Cunanan.

But unlike the epic “The People v. O.J.,” “Versace” is a dramatically different story – one told in a non-linearly manner and one that also fails to link the hot button issues of today with those prevalent 30 years ago. “The People v. O.J.” was compelling partly because it was able to point to a significant moment in time and highlight how the country is still facing similar complex problems.

“Versace” is also a bit misleading. Ads and promotion for show will have you to believe Ramirez, Cruz and Martin are all major players this season. Though they do appear in almost every episode – mostly a few scenes here and there – the second “ACS” installment is “The Darren Criss Show.” But that’s not a bad thing! Criss, who is on screen about 70% of the time, is terrifyingly electrifying, totally allowing himself to be consumed by his character.

“Versace” isn’t a zippy and campy courtroom drama that re-litigates the past but a meditative mood piece of sorts. It’s less an investigation of how Gianni was murdered but why he was murdered. The season is a compelling portrait of a serial killer and it’s success rests mostly on Criss’s shoulders, who proves himself here with a marvelous breakout performance as the deranged albeit very charming Cunanan.

Based on Maureen Orth’s book “Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U. S. History” (with out “London Spy” writer Tom Rob Smith penning a number of the episodes) the show is also gloriously gay. From its opening moments (there’s an ode to “Moonlight” in the first 5 minutes of the first episode), the show’s biggest theme is what it was like to be gay in the 90s; an exploration of the dangers of the closet.

Many of Cunanan’s experiences in the gay community are depicted, including his struggle with being accepted by other gay men and his troubles with finding true love and meaningful connections. In one daring scene in the latter part of the season, Cunanan is bluntly told that he’s not desirable by men because he’s Asian. (Like Criss, Cunanan was half Filipino).

For Gianni, he’s often bumping up against Donatella, who struggles with accepting his sexuality and his relationship with his partner. We also see Gianni’s deteriorating health and his battle with HIV/AIDS. Well aware of his condition, he’s preparing for his sister to take over the fashion company, helping her become a confidant businesswoman and designer. “Versace” even manages to show how the now-defunct Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy (instituted by the Clinton administration in 1944 but ended with Obama in 2011), which prevented gay military members from openly serving, impacted the gay community.

Above all else, “Versace” is about fitting in and finding acceptance among friends, family and society. For Cunanan, doing so was difficult even amongst his own community. As Murphy recently explained, his interactions in the gay community played a role in his killings.

“[He was a] person who targeted people specifically to shame them and to out them, and to have a form of payback for a life that he felt he could not live,” the producer said.

“The underlying subject is homophobia and how homophobia killed him,” Ramirez said of Gianni. “That’s something that comes up over and over when we look into the investigation. … Cunanan was on the news every night, on the most-wanted list, and for some reason all the law-enforcement authorities couldn’t get him.”

“Versace” unspools like a series of short stories. It begins with the Gianni’s murder and then moves backwards from there, mostly following Cunanan on his killing spree. Unlike “The People v. O.J.” (and many true crime shows), which did not show Nicole Brown Simpson or Ron Goldman, “Versace” takes the time to spotlight each of Cunanan’s victims, fleshing them out and making them into complex characters. Among Cunanan’s victims was wealthy real estate tycoon Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell), who Cunanan killed before Gianni. The third episode is solely devoted to him and his death, featuring an outstanding guest performance from Judith Light, who plays his wife Marilyn Miglin.

The bulk of the season follows Cunanan and his relationship with his first two victims, former U.S. navel officer Jeffrey Trail (played by the wonderful Finn Wittrock) and one-time-lover David Madson (Cody Fern). This is where “Versace” flounders a bit. The chronology of the men’s murders is told out of order and things can quickly get confusing, especially for those unfamiliar with the case.

Despite some its shortcomings, “Versace” is still a thoroughly entertaining and exciting season of TV that gives Criss an opportunity prove he’s come a long way since his “Glee” days. It’s hard to tell how the second season of “ACS” will resonate with viewers; the fact that it’s so unashamedly gay may turn off some people (but who really cares about that). “Versace” will unlikely capture the same kind of spark “The People v. O.J. Simpson” did two years ago, but the new installment in Murphy’s anthology series has his thumbprint on it. With stunning production value and fabulous performances from everyone involved, “Versace” has something to say and it is essential television.

Homophobia Examined in ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ Where Darren Criss Shines

American Crime Story’s Versace Doesn’t Actually Have Much Versace — and That’s Great

In the first scene of FX’s American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, the title character (Edgar Ramirez) wakes up, glides through his gilded mansion, accepts a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice that he sips by the courtyard pool, and heads out to buy a stack of magazines from a nearby newsstand. This is the ’90s Miami of The Birdcage, a haven for gay men, awash in creams and peachy-pinks. The second installment of the true-crime anthology series that Ryan Murphy began with The People vs. O.J. Simpson, Versace tells another blood-soaked story about the crazy-making quest for wealth and fame — or at least the appearance of it.

At the outset, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, which premieres Jan. 17, feels like a straightforward continuation of The People vs. O.J. Simpson, which also takes place in the mid-to-late 1990s. Both examine the then-novel concept of death as a 24-hour-news-cycle spectacle: When Versace is gunned down in front of his home, a crowd forms outside, and a tourist who earlier sought the man’s autograph now sneaks under police tape to dip a Versace ad torn from a magazine in the designer’s blood. But it’s fitting that the show opens on the last morning of Gianni Versace’s life, on July 15, 1997. By the second episode, Versace himself fades from focus, replaced by 27-year-old serial killer Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) — a nothing, a nobody, until he made a name for himself by murdering his idol.

Criss’ portrayal of Cunanan, a gay man whose outward confidence and taste for the finer things belies a deep well of insecurity, is the highlight of the show. This is a guy who can make eating a bowl of Fruit Loops look menacing. The gripping performance is enhanced by the show’s narrative structure, a risky gambit that pays off: The season moves backward in time, each episode taking place just before the events of the previous week’s. Versace is a puzzle the viewer puts together as it goes on, and with this approach the story seems to ripen with every episode as we move deeper and more intimately into Cunanan’s past.

We also learn about his other, less glamorous victims, almost all of them gay men who entered into relationships with Cunanan. (The series is based on the 1999 book Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U. S. History by Vanity Fair’s Maureen Orth.) Writer Tom Rob Smith, himself openly gay, draws out the way Cunanan exploits the stigma of being gay in the 1990s both to lure his prey and to cover up his crimes. He is devious in his manipulations. Against his victims, Cunanan wields a possessive logic: the world doesn’t want or accept you, but I do. Against law enforcement, he cannily exploits the systemic straightness of police, leaving behind evidence of the victims’ sexual proclivities that makes it easier for the cops to, if not dismiss the crimes, treat them with a smirk and a sideways glance: Oh, it’s a gay thing. “They hate us, David. They’ve always hated us,” Cunanan tells an ex-boyfriend. “You’re a fag.”

Versace is not camp; it’s a respectful and often deeply moving depiction of the struggle for acceptance, both from the wider world and from oneself. Despite the boldfaced names touted in FX’s ads, the story of Gianni Versace, his sister, Donatella (Penelope Cruz), and his lover of 15 years, Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin), merely frames Cunanan’s escapades. Thematically, the parallel story lines of Versace and his killer work in tandem: In one episode, we witness Cunanan construct a sellable version of himself as Gianni helps Donatella design her first dress; in another, Gianni contemplates a public coming-out while the alternate story follows a gay character in the Navy during the era of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

The Versace family has already released a statement declaring the show’s depiction of the late designer’s professional and domestic struggles a fantasy. But the Versaces are the embroidery here, not the tapestry. Like Orange Is the New Black’s Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling) — the nice white lady who’s sent to the big, bad prison — the Versace angle is a Trojan horse, a mass-marketable hook for a series that’s actually most interested in stories about less flashy, more marginal characters. This is far less a show about a fabulous atelier than it is about a handful of gay men you’ve probably never heard of.

Sure, it’s a bait-and-switch. But maybe that’s what we need at a moment when a powerful speech at an awards ceremony is all it takes for the media to breathlessly anticipate Oprah 2020. As much as I loved O.J., which rightfully won the Emmy for Outstanding Limited Series last year, I have serious reservations about the prospect of our popular culture being clogged with stories about celebrities from 20 years ago (next up on the Murphy/FX docket is Feud: Charles and Diana).

The casting of the long-closeted Martin as Versace’s partner is a nod to the fact that we have finally reached a point when an openly gay man can create a show for a major cable channel that’s this, well, gay. With so few straight characters, Versace can move beyond the anxiety of representation — no one gay man stands in for the whole. There’s no hint of a character or story line that feels wedged in for the sake of the platonic straight male viewer. Cruz is wonderful as the fledgling version of the Donatella we know and love — and also, it has to be said, almost distractingly beautiful — but she remains fully clothed throughout.

Again, it’s Criss who is the main draw. Despite a bit of midseason sag in the plot, he holds the viewer tight in his grip. Cunanan exerts control over his victims calmly, which is so much scarier than bluster, like your mom going really quiet when you know you’re in trouble. He’s got a Trumpian swag, an unearned confidence in his ability to sell himself to anyone. Yet Criss never lets us forget his desperation and shame, the self-loathing just beneath the surface of the collegiate bravado. You can just make out the panic behind his eyes. “You can’t go to America and start from nothing,” Cunanan’s father, an immigrant from the Philippines, tells him in a flashback episode. “That’s the lie.”

The character calls to mind two creepy-brother portrayals in films of the past year: Caleb Landry Jones in Get Out and Billy Magnussen in Ingrid Goes West. Like this pair of privileged yet sinister bros, Cunanan as depicted in Versace is a country-club psycho — an embodiment of the moral rot at the core of the pristine image of the American dream.

American Crime Story’s Versace Doesn’t Actually Have Much Versace — and That’s Great

’American Crime Story: Versace’ Is A Fractured Look At A Famous Murder

“I’m not interested in his intentions. Find him. Catch him. But don’t talk to me about what might or might not be going through his mind.”

This is Marilyn Miglin (Judith Light), widow of the third victim in the string of murders that brought Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) to Miami, where he fulfilled the title of Ryan Murphy’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, which debuts on FX on Wednesday. She doesn’t want explanations, or psychoanalysis; she just wants law-enforcement to get the man who killed her husband Lee (Mike Farrell).

The real-life Miglins have long maintained that Lee’s death was a random killing, and that he never knew Cunanan, so they — like the Versaces and the families of his other victims — will likely not be pleased with anything about this new American Crime Story season. And this fictionalized version of Marilyn Miglin will surely disapprove of the approach Murphy and company (primarily English writer Tom Rob Smith, adapting Maureen Orth’s book Vulgar Favors) have taken, which is much less interested in the hunt for Cunanan than in trying to understand how he could so swiftly and brutally end so many lives.

Those expecting a spiritual sequel to The People v. O.J. Simpson — with its sprawling casting of characters, deft mix of tones (which allowed Courtney B. Vance’s fiery but real Johnnie Cochran to somehow co-exist with whatever John Travolta was doing as Robert Shapiro), and vivid recreations of famous events — will likely be disappointed by the long-delayed second season(*). So, for that matter, will people expecting the story to primarily focus on fashion designer Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez), his sister Donatella (Penelope Cruz), and his romantic partner Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin), since the main character is Cunanan, with the Versaces popping up intermittently. (Critics were given eight of the nine episodes.)

(*) This was actually intended as the third ACS season, and is debuting on schedule. The problem is that a planned second season about Hurricane Katrina took so long to figure out that Versace got done first, and the Katrina story will either air later this year or sometime in 2019.

The approach is The Talented Mr. Ripley by way of Memento, starting off with the eponymous murder (and a flashback sequence about how killer and victim crossed paths years earlier in San Francisco), then moving relentlessly backwards, so that most episodes concludes right before the events of the previous one, retracing the trail of violence and lies that took Cunanan to Versace’s front gate.

It’s a narratively audacious move, but a frustrating one, too. First, it asks us to understand and care about most of Cunanan’s victims, like Navy vet Jeff Trail (Finn Witrock) or soft-spoken architect David Madson (Cody Fern) only after we’ve seen them brutally killed. Worse, it does the same with Cunanan himself, who remains — despite an excellent, career-redefining performance by Glee alum Criss — a maddening cipher: a sociopath and pathological liar who becomes whatever he thinks the occasion calls for, even in front of people who think they know who he really is. For a long time, it feels as if Murphy, Smith, and company don’t even know who Cunanan was. And though the eighth episode — set in Cunanan’s child and teen years, and featuring Jon Jon Briones (currently starring on Broadway in Miss Saigon) as Cunanan’s profoundly influential father Modesto — finally begins to unravel the mystery man at the center of this all, it feels too little, too late for a show that’s spent so much time in the company of a man who keeps playing one variation of the same note, again and again.

At the same time, if you can view Cunanan not as the protagonist of Assassination, but its connective tissue, then it begins to feel more satisfying as a series of tragic vignettes about what it was like to be gay in America in the ’90s. Trail, for instance, deals with rampant homophobia among his fellow sailors, not to mention the corrosive impact of the new “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, while the Miglin marriage is presented as a business partnership (he’s in real estate, she’s a cosmetics magnate who regularly appears on Home Shopping Network) at least as much as it is a romantic relationship. Cunanan snuffed out lives and ruined others, but in the process gives the series reason to settle in with these people and tell their stories, with some powerhouse performances — in particular by Light, in what feels destined to be the first of many collaboration with Murphy, and by an unrecognizable Max Greenfield as a friend Cunanan makes shortly before the Versace killing — along the way. We see how much more dangerous it was to be gay back then, and yet how staying in the closet could be a life or death choice, and not always in an expected way. The series suggests Miglin’s path might never have crossed with Cunanan’s if Lee didn’t need to keep his sexuality a secret, and there are periodic suggestions that Cunanan’s spree could have been stopped much sooner if law-enforcement both cared more about his victims and saw this fugitive gay escort as more of an ongoing threat.

“They hate us, David,” Cunanan tells Madson to talk him out of calling the cops at one point. “They’ve always hated us. You’re a fag.”

The Versaces reappear whenever their story overlaps thematically with what’s happening with one of the victims — Gianni officially comes out of the closet in a magazine interview in the same episode where Trail gives a less glamorous interview about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell — and Ramirez, Martin, and, especially, Cruz, are so outstanding that it’s easy to wish Assassination devoted more time to its title character.

Like most of Murphy’s productions, the season — directors include Murphy himself, Gwyneth Horder-Payton, Dan Minahan, Nelson Cragg, and Matt Bomer (who starred in Murphy’s HBO adaptation of The Normal Heart) — is a visual marvel, particularly whenever we get to spend time in Versace’s world and understand that the fanciness of the decor is less an indulgence than a philosophical imperative by a man who, as Donatella explains, “has a weakness for beauty; he forgives it anything.”

But Cunanan’s just not interesting enough to support so much screen time, especially because we don’t really get to understand what makes him tick until the story’s nearly over. And even then, it’s hard to find empathy, given what we know about all the horror he inflicted.

“I am not like most escorts,” he boasts to Lee Miglin. “I am not like most anybody. I could almost be a husband, or a partner. I could almost be. I really could. Almost.”

The anthology miniseries boom that Murphy created with American Horror Story means each season could almost be anything at all, and there are plenty of times where Assassination feels almost as great as the O.J. season. But because its central character is always only almost one thing or another, it’s only almost, and never quite there.

’American Crime Story: Versace’ Is A Fractured Look At A Famous Murder

“Assassination of Gianni Versace” investigates murder and homophobia

With its first season, “American Crime Story” – Ryan Murphy’s anthology series dramatizing infamous true-life criminal investigations – took the audacious risk of addressing the O.J. Simpson case, a still-polarizing public spectacle which continues to cast a long shadow over our cultural identity.

The gambit paid off. “The People vs. O.J. Simpson” became must-watch T.V., garnering widespread critical acclaim and earning multiple awards. Though many of Murphy’s other shows (“Glee,” “American Horror Story,” “The New Normal”) have had their share of both admirers and detractors, “Crime Story” met with almost unanimous approval, ensuring its return for a second season.

Though it’s taken a couple of years, that season has finally arrived.

“The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” makes its much-anticipated premiere on January 17 (on FX), and promises to deliver the same kind of savvy and cinematic style which elevated “O.J.” above the level of a lurid potboiler and prevented it from being an exploitative rehash of a story most of us already knew all too well.

The murder of fashion giant Versace on the steps of his Miami Beach mansion in 1997 came as a shocking twist at the end of a news story that had already been unfolding for weeks. In April, Andrew Cunanan, a 27-year old San Diego resident, had begun a cross-country killing spree which started with the beating death of an acquaintance and claimed the lives of at least three more people before climaxing in the shooting of Versace on July 15. The fact that Cunanan was already a known fugitive (he had been placed on the FBI’s “10 Most Wanted” list), and that he had been “hiding in plain sight” in Miami for two weeks before the designer’s killing, opened law enforcement officials to criticism for their failure to apprehend him before his final act of violence; that he continued to elude capture until his suicide by gunshot eight days later only fueled further controversy.

Complicating the entire investigation, of course, was the matter of sexuality. Cunanan was gay. He was familiar to many in the gay club scene of which he was a part, and known to be a charmer. He had a history of becoming involved with older men from whom he would receive money and gifts. As these facts were revealed during the manhunt which followed his first murder, it was impossible not to speculate that they may – in the homophobic atmosphere of the mid-nineties – have had some bearing on the seriousness with which law enforcement took the case, begging the question of whether Versace’s eventual killing could have been prevented.

With the first installment of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” Murphy and writer Tom Rob Smith waste no time in addressing that question. After an elegantly orchestrated opening sequence depicting the events of that July morning – in which the activities of both Versace and Cunanan are intercut until they come together for their fatal meeting – the show immediately begins to explore a subtle but pervasive homophobic slant.

The obvious discomfort of detectives at Versace’s mansion over the presence of the victim’s boyfriend (Antonio D’Amico, portrayed with surprising authenticity and tenderness by Ricky Martin); their questioning of him about the designer’s sexual habits and perceived promiscuity; the revelation that stacks of “wanted” posters showing Cunanan’s face are sitting, still undistributed, in the trunk of an FBI agent’s car – all these details and more reveal a certain prejudicial thinking within the law enforcement community.

It’s not just an issue within official circles, either. The first episode culminates with the arrival of Donatella Versace (played with regal, imperious splendor by a spectacularly blond-wigged Penelope Cruz), who swoops in to protect the family business by clamping down on the way her dearly departed brother’s image is depicted in the media. Though it’s never explicitly stated, it’s clear that public perception of his sexuality – which was an “open secret” during his life – is central to her concerns.

There is also the matter of Cunanan’s relationship with his own sexuality. As the show begins to explore his history (beginning what will presumably be a continuing pattern moving between flashbacks to the events leading up to Versace’s murder and the saga of the manhunt which followed it), we see his deliberate obfuscation about being gay with his friends. Likewise, Versace, though seemingly open about his nature within his exclusive circle, is nevertheless depicted as being carefully guarded about it; though the subject of his sexuality is – glaringly – never mentioned in his scenes, this self-protective attitude comes less from the script than it does from the exquisitely modulated performance of Edgar Ramirez, whose layered portrayal gives us a generous and sympathetic impression of the late designer.

Joining Ramirez, Cruz, and Martin to round out the principal cast is Darren Criss as Cunanan. It’s a challenging role, for many reasons – not the least of which is the fact that much of what we see of him is necessarily based on speculation. In the first episode, what comes through is a portrait of a deeply, almost painfully insecure young man, hiding behind blatantly fabricated fantasies to create an image of himself to sell to those around him. What does not come through – at least not yet – is his attractiveness and appeal. Criss is a handsome actor, but as Cunanan he seems decidedly ordinary; this is not a bad thing, by any means, but to convince us of this killer’s ability to charm his way into the lives of so many men he must also show us some of Cunanan’s charisma. Hopefully, as the series progresses, more of this will be revealed.

The series’ cast is also peppered with other recognizable faces – Max Greenfield, Dascha Polanco, Jay R. Ferguson, Jose Zuniga, Annaleigh Ashford, and Oscar nominee Cathy Moriarty (in a welcome cameo as a pawnshop owner) all appear in the first episode, with names such as Judith Light and Mike Farrell scheduled to come.

Apart from the usual celebrity appeal of Murphy’s shows, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is also steeped in the same attention to detail and period authenticity we have come to expect – the opulence and glamor of the high-end fashion world in which Versace was immersed has been recreated with obvious delight, of course, but equal attention has been given to the more squalid environments which are every bit as much a part of the story.

Welcome as these “A-List” attractions may be, though, they are not what make the upcoming season of “American Crime Story” worth watching.

With the previous season’s examination of the O.J. case, Murphy and his creative team were shrewd enough to realize that what made the story important was not the sensational details of the murder and trial, but rather the underlying current of racism which informed every aspect of the way events unfolded. With their handling of the Cunanan story, it is obvious that they have brought that same understanding to the proceedings – and as before, the way their observations about the social biases within their story’s setting provides a pointed reflection of those that linger in our own time.

“The Assassination of Gianni Versace” may be a tale of American crime, but it’s also a tale of American homophobia.

“Assassination of Gianni Versace” investigates murder and homophobia