REVIEW: Gianni Versace gets stylish attention in new miniseries

The opening minutes of “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” are about as operatic as television gets.

Jumping right into the meat of the story, they show serial killer Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) gunning down the designer on the steps of his Miami mansion.

The limited series then backtracks, detailing what may have prompted the action and what kind of lives the two led.

Versace, for as much as the FX series’ producers can discern, had everything Cunanan wanted – power, fame, money and attention.

In flashbacks, we see the young man pretending to travel in the same circles. He drops plenty of salient information. But, really, everything he knows he gleans from magazines and books. He and Versace weren’t friends.

His is a matter of desire and “Assassination” is a telling portrait of fame, from those who have it and those who want it.

Written by Tom Rob Smith, the episodes take full advantage of the luxe settings created by Judy Becker and Jamie Walker McCall. You can feel the opulence of Versace’s world, sense the desire from Cunanan’s.

When Director Ryan Murphy shows glimpses of Cunanan’s past, you can see why he wanted to be in the designer’s inner circle. But that circle? It’s practically strangling. While Versace (Edgar Ramirez) appears to be a man about town, walking to the newsstand to get his daily dose of reading material, he’s very much a product of his own kingdom. Murphy gives a good tour of the home (parts were actually shot there) and offers a glimpse of the relationships he has with his lover (Ricky Martin) and sister Donatella (Penelope Cruz).

In subsequent episodes, it’s very clear Donatella is powerful. (“Nearly every dress I make is for her,” Versace says of his designs.) She controls everything – down to the way he looks before he’s cremated. Martin’s Antonio D’Amico, though, is often the odd man out.

Through Cunanan, we learn Versace created fabrics and was branching out into costume design. To make his story seem legit, the killer drops plenty of factoids and names. Cunanan is a smart man. But his obsession isn’t channeled and, the miniseries suggests, it turned into jealousy.

There are other victims in later episodes (Cunanan killed in the Midwest before he headed to Florida) and examples of the divide that existed between the young, ambitious man and the people he admired.

Criss doesn’t overdo any of the guises. He’s very good kissing up to the powerful; he’s able to blend in when he’s trying to hide from authorities. And while Murphy and other directors aren’t afraid to show his kinkier side, it is strange that moments seem like they’re from “American Horror Story,” not “American Crime Story.”

Max Greenfield makes an impression as a gay man Cunanan befriends in Florida and Finn Wittrock, Judith Light and Mike Farrell make it worthwhile to hang in to see just how far this story goes.

If there’s a loose thread it’s that “Assassination” doesn’t give us enough of Versace. Ramirez makes him a fascinating character. He just isn’t given the runway Cruz gets. She makes Donatella her own – right down to the deep voice. She’s more attractive than the designer’s sister but she still finds the insecurity that must nip at the heels of related fame.

Because it’s so great at reclaiming an era we almost forgot, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” easily stands as first must-see offering of 2018. It checks all the boxes needed for the perfect winter miniseries and there’s not an inch of it that isn’t stylish.

Ryan Murphy digs into another crime story with ‘Versace’

“The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” (10 p.m. Wednesday, FX) is inherently more interesting than its acclaimed predecessor, “The People vs. O.J. Simpson.”

Sure, the title’s a bit of a spoiler. But there isn’t a white Bronco chase. There’s no, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” Aside from the principals — the Italian fashion designer and his obsessed murderer, Andrew Cunanan — few details of the 20-year-old crime remain rooted in the American consciousness.

Best of all, there isn’t a Kardashian in sight.

As Versace, Edgar Ramirez makes one of the grandest entrances you’ll ever see on TV. He rises from bed in a room that resembles the Sistine Chapel, slides into slippers worth more than my car and dons a fabulous pink robe before stepping onto his balcony to survey his Mediterranean-style villa that’s decorated in what could charitably described as “drug lord chic.” Eight uniformed servants, as still as statues, await him in the courtyard, where he glides by, grabbing a glass of orange juice from a silver tray before venturing out for breakfast by the pool in what looks like Bellagio’s most exclusive corner. The scene is as operatic as it is opulent.

Versace’s name is in the title, and viewers will learn quite a bit about the designer, his sister Donatella (Penelope Cruz) and his partner of 15 years, Antonio D’Amico (Park Theater headliner Ricky Martin). The real star, though, is “Glee’s” Darren Criss, who threatens to turn the spree-killing Cunanan into a camp icon.

Driving through South Carolina on his way to Miami Beach, Cunanan changes the radio station from a report of his being wanted for murder to one playing Laura Branigan’s “Gloria,” which launches him into a jubilant singalong. Later, he dances about to Phil Collins and Philip Bailey’s “Easy Lover” in a tiny pink swimsuit inside a pink hotel suite while some poor mark he hustled on the beach struggles mightily for breath on the bed.

Keep in mind, the series may be written by Tom Rob Smith (the miniseries “London Spy”), based on the controversial book “Vulgar Favors” by Maureen Orth, but it’s overseen by Ryan Murphy of “American Horror Story,” “Glee” and “Nip/Tuck” fame. Ball gags and bondage gear are the only types of restraint he’s ever shown.

As charming liars go, Criss’ Cunanan falls somewhere between those of “Catch Me If You Can” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley.”

A flirtatious young man approaches Cunanan at a nightclub and asks what he does for a living. “I’m a serial killer,” he responds. “What?” the man asks, unable to make out his answer over the roar of the music. “I said, ‘I’m a banker.’ I’m a stockbroker. I’m a shareholder. I’m a paperback writer. I’m a cop. I’m a naval officer. Sometimes, I’m a spy. I build movie sets in Mexico and skyscrapers in Chicago. I sell propane in Minneapolis. Import pineapples from the Philippines. I’m the person least likely to be forgotten.”

I’m waiting for Benj Pasek and Justin Paul to set that to a foot-stomping beat for “Cunanan: The Musical.”

The Versace family has slammed the series, saying it “should only be considered as a work of fiction.” Among the limited series’ more controversial aspects are allegations that the designer had contracted HIV and that he had met, interacted with and even become captivated by his killer nearly seven years before in San Francisco.

But, as Cunanan says when he’s confronted about his series of lies and told that what he says matters: “Only if they know it isn’t true.”

Ryan Murphy digs into another crime story with ‘Versace’

‘Assassination of Versace’: Criss is electrifying

★★★☆

WHAT IT’S ABOUT Fashion designer Gianni Versace was shot and killed by a lone gunman when walking outside his Miami Beach villa in 1997. This second of Ryan Murphy’s “American Crime Story” series, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” begins on a brilliant sunny morning, with Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) stalking Versace (Edgar Ramirez) after he returns home. The police response is bungled, in part because the FBI had not distributed posters of Cunanan, already wanted in a string of murders, including wealthy Chicago businessman Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell, appearing in later episodes), and two Cunanan friends, former Navy officer Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock) and Minneapolis architect David Madson (Cody Fern). After Versace’s murder, his sister Donatella (Penélope Cruz) arrives to figure out what to do with the empire, and with her brother’s lover, Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin). This nine-parter is based on Maureen Orth’s 1999 book, “Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History.”

MY SAY “Versace” is a story told in reverse. This begins at the beginning — the shooting of Versace on July 15, 1997 — then proceeds backward, year by year and crime by crime. Criss’ Cunanan starts off as a fully formed monster, then devolves from there. As a point of comparison, imagine that he enters the series as Frankenstein, then with each subsequent week, a new body part is subtracted, until the penultimate episode, when he is simply a beating heart.

If this sounds confusing, it’s not. If it sounds macabre and horrifying, then that it most definitely is. In an electrifying performance, Criss spins his character’s lies so deftly that the violence that invariably follows them is a blow to the solar plexus. When he smiles brightly, the psycho middle-distance stare also follows, and he then pulls out the gun from his waistband.

Nevertheless, this reverse narrative was a risky decision by Murphy because it places viewers in the awkward position of omniscience. As they move backward in time, they know what’s coming before the victims do. Cunanan becomes more despicable, but less comprehensible. Why this horrifying string of murders? The question hangs there, while an answer hovers just beyond reach, taunting viewers, like Banquo’s ghost.

Reasonably enough, neither “Versace” nor Criss wanted to humanize Cunanan, so they dehumanized him instead. They also succeeded so well that they undercut both the premise and title of the entire miniseries. This is called “the assassination” of Versace as an indictment of mid-’90s America, which kept the closet closed on so many gay men, or forced someone like Trail out of the “don’t ask don’t tell” Navy, or allowed a murder spree like this to happen due to homophobia in the police response.

But as far as the first eight episodes are concerned (the only ones offered for review), Versace wasn’t “assassinated” any more than John Lennon was “assassinated.” They were killed by loner psychotic men armed with handguns. This alone makes “Versace” even sadder and scarier, as much a real-life “American Horror Story” as an “American Crime” one.

You’ll also want to know whether this is as good as “The People v. O.J. Simpson” (the first “ACS”), and the answer is no. Based on the Orth book, “Versace” still goes well beyond the book to re-create dialogue that no one could ever possibly know. The creative license is justified but hardly airtight. “O.J.” had Jeffrey Toobin’s book and the vast reportorial record. This has a cipher (Cunanan) and supposition at its core.

There are many pleasures here, however, and they are entirely in the craftsmanship. There are some superb performances — Judith Light as the repressed widow of Miglin is stunning — and it’s hard to think of one that isn’t good. “Versace” gets the little things right. It’s the bigger picture that’s the problem.

BOTTOM LINE Sorry, not as good as “O.J.,” but Criss turns in a dynamic performance in service of a desperately sad story.

‘Assassination of Versace’: Criss is electrifying

‘American Crime Story’ hits sophomore slump with ‘Versace’ (review)

CLEVELAND, Ohio – The evidence so impressively stacked up in “The People v. O.J. Simpson” was overwhelming. The conclusion was as obvious as it was inescapable. FX’s first “American Crime Story” season would be one incredibly tough act to follow.

Imagine trying to come up with a sophomore season as mesmerizing and grandly realized as the Emmy-winning “People v. O.J. Simpson.” Executive producer Ryan Murphy and his team apparently couldn’t imagine it, and so we get “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” the terribly uneven second “American Crime Story,” premiering at 10 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 17.

Remember how the first season of HBO’s “True Detective” had critics and viewers reaching for the superlatives? We couldn’t wait for the second season. Here was a show destined to take crime-time storytelling to new heights.

Then, of course, we saw the second season of “True Detective” and realized, in truth, we could have waited. The drop-off between the first and second season of “American Crime Story” is nowhere near as precipitous, but it is dramatic.

Certainly the case is quickly made that “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” pales in comparison with its acclaimed predecessor. Although the nine-part true-crime drama has much to recommend it, starting with the superb work of Darren Criss as serial killer Andrew Cunanan, it lacks any clear sense of what it’s trying to say about the characters and the American landscape they populate.

If it seems like it has been a long wait since “The People v. O.J. Simpson” aired in 2016, keep in mind that “Versace” wasn’t supposed to be the second season of “American Crime Story.” That was going to focus on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, relying heavily on Sheri Fink’s book “Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital.” That now will be the third season.

“The Assassination of Gianni Versace” doesn’t seem rushed so much as fuzzy and uncertain. In fact, give Murphy credit for attempting something completely different in tone, mood, style, look and pace. But where “O.J.” was sharply focused and magnificently detailed, “Versace” is ponderous and plodding.

The visual flourishes and grand-opera touches are impressive, yet they often seem overplayed and self-conscious, as if trying to make up for the lack of substance. And there is a decided lack of substance. Indeed, while “O.J.” was packed with layers upon layers of expertly arranged information, “Versace” is a story that could have been told in about half the time.

The second season opens in Miami Beach on July 15, 1997, with a seven-minute sequence almost completely devoid of dialogue. Yes, Murphy begins with the murder of international fashion icon Versace (Edgar Ramirez) on the steps of his opulent South Beach residence.

We see Versace getting out of bed, putting on a robe and making his way to a balcony, where he looks for all the world like an emperor surveying his kingdom. We see Cunanan sitting on the beach, checking on the .40-caliber semi-automatic pistol in his knapsack. They are a study in contrasts, and they remain so for the rest of the episodes, which charts the paths to this collision course in reverse.

In this way, we see how the serial killer arrived at the steps of Versace’s home. They are mirror images, in a dark and distorted kind of way, as if Cunanan is a fun-house mirror reflection of Versace.

It’s an intriguing idea poorly executed. “Versace” makes an ambitious attempt to examine, like “O.J.,” the crosscurrents of American culture, but never develops a strong and cohesive overall vision.

There’s nothing wrong with the cast, which also includes Penelope Cruz, Ricky Martin, Dascha Polanco, Max Greenfield, Cody Fern, Judith Light and Mike Farrell. And there are many incredibly suspenseful and deeply fascinating stretches. The problem is that fascination is wrapped around frustration in this second “American Crime Story,” which is wearisomely lighter on details and slower of pace.

Based on the book “Vulgar Favors” by Maureen Orth, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” demands great patience and indulgence on the part of viewers. Criss provides the most compelling reason to stick with these episodes, and even this stunning performance might not be enough to keep you following a dark trail that takes so many wrong turns.

‘American Crime Story’ hits sophomore slump with ‘Versace’ (review)

TV highlights for the week of Jan. 14-20

WEDNESDAY

After a mesmerizing look back at the O.J. Simpson murder case, anthology series “American Crime Story” from prolific producer Ryan Murphy turns its attention to the 1997 murder of fashion icon Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez). Darren Criss (“Glee”) delivers an astonishing performance as troubled spree-killer Andrew Cunanan, whose path of destruction landed him on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List even before he shot Versace on the steps outside his Miami Beach mansion. The cast also features Penélope Cruz and Ricky Martin. 10 p.m., FX.

TV highlights for the week of Jan. 14-20

“The Assassination of Gianni Versace”: what works (and what does not) – VanityFair.it

(Google translate from Italian)

It is the first time that an entire American series is dedicated to one of the most famous media cases in Italian history. No wonder, then, that the wait for The Assassination of Gianni Versace (from 19 January on FoxCrime), second chapter of the anthology of Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story, skyrocketed in Italy, where it is already much discussed.

A few days before airing, the designer’s family has distanced itself and specified in a statement that “they have neither authorized nor had any involvement in the television series dedicated to the death of Gianni Versace.”

“Since Versace has not authorized the book from which it is partially based on, and has not taken part in the writing of the screenplay, this television series must be considered a work of fiction.”

The Murphy series, in fact, is taken from the book Vulgar Favors written in 1999 by the journalist Maureen Orth.

Even if is to be taken as fiction, the opening sequence, dedicated to that morning of July 15, 1997 in which Versace was shot dead by Andrew Cunanan in front of his famous house in Miami Beach, will give shivers. It is a timeless image, that of the dead designer on the steps of Villa Casuarina.

Despite the title, The Assassination of Gianni Versace immediately declares it’s intention to show the killer’s point of view, to reconstruct his story (Cunanan committed suicide 8 days later, without ever explaining his motivations).

In the first episode The Man Who Would Be Vogue are the last moments of the life of Versace, who wakes up in luxury, says no to a fan who asks for an autograph outside his home and goes to buy fashion magazines to look at his creations, which alternate with images of Cunanan, who attempts suicide in the ocean, screams, vomits.

The cast is exceptional. Beginning with Venezuelan Edgar Ramírez, who gained 12 kilos to play Versace and learned to speak English with an Italian accent. Then there is Ricky Martin, in the shoes of Antonio D’Amico, the companion of the Calabrian designer, and the fantastic Penélope Cruz with a platinum blonde wig in the role of Donatella Versace, who immediately takes over the reins of the company .

In the role of the killer, repressed homosexual and pathological liar, there is Darren Criss who, with Murphy, has been working since Glee, but here he is certainly at his most difficult test.

This second season of the anthology, however, is different from the first, which accurately told the story of the OJ Simpson trial and has achieved great critical acclaim, and won 9 Emmys and two Golden Globes, including best miniseries of the year.

In addition to faithfully reconstructing the process and the media case, The People v. OJ Simpson had been a gimmick to talk about racism, the distortion of news from the tabloids, and the role of women (thanks to the story of the prosecution attorney Marcia Clark).

The Assassination of Gianni Versace, on the other hand, is focused on homophobia from the 1990s, a theme very dear to Murphy. That perhaps, for this reason, he lets his hand escape, dedicating a little too much space.

The series proceeds by flashback, alternating to the present on the Versace case with the story of Cunanan, who suffered the rejection of society for gays and at some point in his life became a serial killer: before the designer, he had killed four men, all his lovers.

The most interesting parts, however, are those dedicated to life and the background of the Versace family. And seeing Ramirez, Cruz and Martin at work is fascinating. Even if it’s just fiction.

“The Assassination of Gianni Versace”: what works (and what does not) – VanityFair.it

American Crime Story Takes on Versace’s Murder

It doesn’t take long for The Assassination of Gianni Versace to get to the point. When the neo-couture designer is shot in the face outside his Miami Beach mansion, perhaps five minutes into the show, one riff-raff-ista snaps a quick Polaroid of his dying body, then begins soliciting business at the top of his voice: “I have the only photo of Versace! The bidding starts at 30 thousand!” A few feet away, tourists are soaking napkins in his puddled blood, then sealing them in plastic bags, artifacts of the True Cross for the 20th century’s most heartfelt religion, the cult of celebrity.

If Federico Fellini had ever visited South Beach, the result might have been something like The Assassination Of Gianni Versace—a long, horrified gaze at the corrupting effect of celebrity, not just on those who possess it, but on the culture in which they dwell. Scarcely a moment this nine-episode miniseries—the second installment of Executive Producer Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story anthology drama—goes by fixing on images of the garish and grotesque: A psycho gay hustler dances around the soon-to-be-corpse of one of his tricks, smothering under a hood of duct tape bound around his head in what he expected to be a playful S&M ritual; wizened old men, pale pork bellies hanging over their speedo bathing trunks, wander the streets, peering into the seedy clubs where writhing bodies are wreathed in clouds of amyl nitrite.

And in scene after scene—the hospital, the morgue, the mortuary—the stiffening cadaver of Versace lies omnipresently by, gaping bullet wound in each cheek, awaiting repair with mortician’s foundation, the final artifice of a life dedicated to the artful concealment of fashion.

The last season of American Crime Story, which retold with stunning acuity the story of O.J. Simpson’s murder trial, also focused in part on the corrosive effect of celebrity, but mostly in the context of the criminal justice system.

This time around, Murphy and his screenwriter Tom Rob Smith (who in 2011 was a literary sensation with his Child 44 trilogy of novels about a homicide detective in Stalinist Russia) have taken square aim at celebrity and the cozenage it almost inevitably breeds.

The 1997 Versace murder is a perfect vehicle for their exploration. Both the Italian-born Versace and Andrew Cunanan, the spree killer who shot him, inhabited a sybaritic club world where sex was easy, drugs cheap and image the coin for both. Versace used his status as a fashion icon to attract a steady parade of awed young men to his mansion.

Cunanan, with no real accomplishments to his name (“Nothing, I’ve done nothing my whole life,” he admits in a rare moment of candor) but possessing an excess of easy charm backed by a superlative talent for lying, pursues his own quarry: older men with money and a fearful indisposition to resist Cunanan’s violent streak. A chance encounter between the two in San Francisco is seemingly uneventful, but in time it sets them on an inexorable collision course.

Murphy, as usual, has accumulated an excellent cast, including Penelope Cruz as Versace’s dour sister Donatella, a weathered Ricky Martin as his weary party-boy lover D’Amico, and Judith Light (Amazon’s Transparent) as the tightly wound wife of one of Cunanan’s deeply closeted tricks. And Versace himself is capably played by Venezuelan actor Edgar Ramirez in his first major English-speaking role after a decade or so of bit parts.

But this show is ultimately the loot in a strong-arm robbery by Darren Criss as the murderous Cunanan. Criss, who played an amiably handsome prep school boy in Murphy’s high-school-musical series Glee, brings a terrifying intensity to his role as the preening, dissembling Cunanan.

Whether he’s befuddling random club acquaintances with blather about his spectacular (and entirely notional) cutting-edge fashion use of crinoline or hacking them to pieces with sharp objects, Criss forges a compulsively watchable chain that locks the camera to himself. His face beams sincerity; his eyes, something more complicated and more compelling, something that makes an acquaintance who has caught Cunanan lying shrug helplessly at his rejoinder: “So?”

Criss is so good that his performance isn’t even undercut by the clumsy decision of Murphy and Smith to embrace the Hollywood’s pseudo-artistic fad for jump-cutting across story lines. Not only is The Assassination of Gianni Versace told backward—the first episode starts with Versace’s murder, the last ends with the designer and his murder struggling with overweening fathers in their childhoods—but it bounces around with flashbacks and flashforwards within individual sequences.

In his O.J. Simpson show, Murphy did a masterful job of clinging to a coherent master narrative while juggling multiple characters and subplots. He’s much less effective here. At times, I wondered if the next scene might open with Sawyer, Jack, and Kate trying to bounce the island further back in time.

Even so, The Assassination of Gianni Versace is a formidable piece of work, brilliant in its characterizations and harrowing in its depictions of the amorality of American culture’s dark underside. Cunanan, asked by a barroom pickup who he is, replies with the dark clarity of a bloodline that stretches from Charles Manson back to Adolf Hitler, Jack the Ripper, and beyond: “I’m the person least likely to be forgotten.”

American Crime Story Takes on Versace’s Murder

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is best when it leaves Versace behind

The People v. O.J. Simpson was an epic take on the Trial of Last Century, merging complexities of race and gender into a saga of celebrity gone criminal. But the debut iteration of FX’s American Crime Story was a retelling, investigating an incident so famous that it could be the American crime story. To be blunt, it had brand recognition. The Assassination of Gianni Versace doesn’t carry the same built-in awareness, even if the title literally contains a brand name. It’s also a trickier work, crisscrossing the country and most of the ’90s. If O.J. was an epic, this is a short-story collection. Some hit, some miss, all share a heartbreaking theme.

The premiere, directed by Ryan Murphy, doesn’t waste time getting to the crime. We see designer Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramírez) in his gold-coated Miami villa, while nearby a young man named Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) sits on a beach, cradling a pistol and an apocalyptic attitude. There’s a gunshot, then the cameras and a surreal media circus. One onlooker dabs a Versace ad in the designer’s bloodstain, a grotesque style-icon variation on the Shroud of Turin.

The nine-episode series then becomes a story told in reverse, tracking Cunanan and Versace backward from their fatal meeting. Almost every major character is gay, and there is a haunting mood of paranoia, everyone trapped in their respective closets. We meet Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell), a real estate magnate married to cosmetics empress Marilyn (Judith Light). We get to know David Madson (Cody Fern) and Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock), young men close enough to Cunanan to know too many of his secrets. Ricky Martin gives a sensitive performance as Versace’s partner Antonio D’Amico. They’re all victims of Cunanan, but they’re also victims of an uncaring world. At one point, Antonio’s interrogated by cops more interested in Gianni’s sex life than his brutal death: Another violation, and he hasn’t washed his lover’s blood off his tennis whites. In this not-distant-enough past, so much of gay identity was secret identity. And Cunanan’s rampage occurred because law enforcement agencies didn’t care about gay people. (And they knew it.)

But there’s something flimsy in the foundation. I’m a fan of Criss, who ranks high in our Sacred Council of Darrens (right behind Aronofsky and the First One From Bewitched). But the structure renders Cunanan a bogeyman, and it’s only later in the season that he gets to shade him with real depth. And the portrait of the Versace family feels respectful to the point of hagiography. Ramírez is trapped in a conventional great-man biopic, while Penélope Cruz as sister Donatella mouths fashion-industry bromides like “For a woman, a dress is a weapon.” I love the show’s willingness to explore everyone orbiting Cunanan’s murder spree, but the central characters feel held at a worshipful remove. Oddly, Versace is best when it leaves Versace behind.

Murphy’s FX anthologies comprise a welcome revisionist history of injustice, of what had been accepted truths or simply ignored in the past, from the misogynistic ’60s of Feud: Bette and Joan (and even American Horror Story: Asylum) through the identity-soaked ’90s bloodshed of American Crime Story. Versace is a middling work in this corpus, but the message still shakes you. You want to reach through the TV screen to these men suffering in the shadows and promise them: “It gets better!” Won’t it? B

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story is best when it leaves Versace behind

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This Week’s Must List: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Paddington 2, and Red Clocks (January 12th, 2018)

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story

The second installment of Ryan Murphy’s true-crime anthology series is a visceral, compelling, and disturbing look at the murder of the titular designer — and the man who killed him, Andrew Cunanan, played by a gripping Darren Criss. (FX, Wednesdays, 10 p.m.)

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TV: ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’

Jan. 17; fxnetworks.com.

On July 15, 1997, the designer Gianni Versace was gunned down on the steps of his Miami Beach mansion, leaving the fashion world to mourn one of its most luminous stars. Eight days later his murderer, Andrew Cunanan, turned his gun on himself.

Starting Wednesday, Jan. 17, on FX, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” will speculate on what motivated the monstrously bright and pathological Cunanan, a social-climbing gay gigolo, to kill at least five men, including Versace. It’s the anthology’s second installment, after 2016’s Emmy-sweeping “The People v. O.J. Simpson.”

The Venezuelan actor Edgar Ramírez portrays a benevolent Versace; Penélope Cruz sweeps in as his sister and muse, Donatella, showing scant mercy to his grieving partner, played by Ricky Martin. And Darren Criss (“Glee”) coolly seethes — until he viciously erupts — as Cunanan. The nine episodes, volleying between the dazzling, sexed-up opulence of Versace’s existence and the grimy despair of Cunanan’s, are adapted from Maureen Orth’s 1999 book, “Vulgar Favors,” which examines the role that homophobia may have played in the hunt for the serial killer. KATHRYN SHATTUCK

Your Week in Culture: Lana Del Rey, ‘Gianni Versace,’ the Murder of Malcolm X Onstage