Tag: review

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story | First impressions

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Coming after the second season after the highly praised first year, titled The People vs. OJ Simpson, American Crime Story back in 2016 became one of the best shows ever shown on TV. Created by Ryan Murphy, the series is produced in an anthology format, that is, each season ACS has a major crime that has caused shock to American society.

For these new episodes titled The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Murphy and his team assembled a well-known cast of Hollywood stars to tell a series of the events related to the death of the well-known stylist that happened in the 90’s. And the new season of ACS is based in the book  Vulgar Favors, written by journalist of the magazine Vanity Fair, Maureen Orth . Tom Rob Smith  (Hidden Crimes, 2015) writes the script for the first two episodes of the season, and we watched along with FOX Channel and we leave our first impressions here.

Known in the midst of fashion for his daring bets and of course for his parties at his Mansion, Gianni Versace was a well-known figure in Miami and the LGBT world. All this fame and notoriety attracted the attention of Andrew Cunanan , a serial killer who was already being chased by the FBI for the deaths of other people. And as previously announced, the plot already starts with the murder itself and The Murder of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story could not start in a more explosive way.

With a dazzling look and a really neat era characterization, ACS: Versace draws attention in its opening minutes for the glamor, the bright colors and the grandeur that Versace Mansion shows us. And of course the house represents well the figure of its owner and the image he wants to pass. And this is all the more accurate when the production manages to make a direct relation of how Cunanan lived and different from the life of his victim he had a much more modest.

As much as  Edgar Ramirez succeeds in representing a Versace, with his head in the clouds, floating and vibrating basically at a different pace than other people, the actor manages to create a character who basically knows that Miami is his feet. Ramirez set the tone for Versace, but who really steals the scene is Darren Criss,like Cunanan. The representation of the serial killer is magnetic, impressive and really charming as the psychopath. Coming from Glee (also from Murphy), Criss shows off his seduction skills and engages everyone in his network of lies and the moment that actor opens his mouth to speak, the viewer is captured by the great job of characterizing the actor who actually shows for what came.

Penelope Cruz as Donatella Versace also manages to create a unique aura of the stylist’s sister and even with a loaded accent passes the feeling of loss, struggle but without such ferocity. When Cruz enters the scene, it seems that world stops and holds its breath to let the blonde character with her sunglasses dominate the environment. Ricky Martin, incredible as it may seem, is very much like Antonio D’Amico, Versace’s long-time partner, and his role has many more layers than we could imagine.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace shows in its first episodes that this new season will work much more on the issue of the psychology and motivations the events that united Gianni and Andrew on that quiet July morning in their tragic outcome. Darren Criss gives an engaging and powerful performance that promises to steal the scenes this season and in the next seasons of awards.

American Crime Story returns with full force to create a dramatic season and a more intense and detailed narrative. A great (and dangerous) adventure inside one of the most striking events of recent years and a series that can not be missed.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story | First impressions

American Crime Story | Primeiras impressões de The Assassination of Gianni Versace

(Google translate)

After the first season of American Crime Story won nine Emmys and two Golden Globes for Ryan Murphy,  the announcement of the second installment, titled The Assassination of Gianni Versace, came surrounded by the highest expectations. To the relief of fans, the first two chapters of the new phase of the anthology series are a good testament that the quality seen in the adaptation of the OJ Simpson trial will be maintained throughout the season, although significant narrative changes have been made. The plot, this time, follows the events that culminated in the death of fashion designer Gianni Versace by the hands of serial killer Andrew Cunanan in 1997 – the new episodes will debut on January 17th on FX .

There is a tone of grandeur throughout the first chapter: the scenes shot with drones inside the mansion where Gianni Versace actually lived, and where he was shot to death, conveys the feel of an established empire: the stylist is a king within his own Castle. There is luxury and priceless detail – Ryan Murphy was concerned with being faithful to the aesthetics of the second half of the 1990s, paying attention to points ranging from magazine covers to the period’s characteristic color palette. For those curious about the facts behind the production, the aerial scenes of the Versace mansion in Miami Beach show the property from every imaginable angle, highlighting the luxurious standard in which the stylist lived until the last days.

Early in the first two episodes, one thing becomes clear: Penelope Cruz is the best thing about The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. There was much anticipation about the work of the 2008 Oscar-winning actress by Vicky Cristina Barcelona in her first television performance. In the Murphy series, Cruz embodies Donatella Versace and the version created by the actress is as faithful as possible to what the world knows of the famous Italian stylist. In addition to the external adaptations such as makeup, hair and costumes – all impeccable – the most surprising is the body work and the strong, sometimes unintelligible accent employed in the scenes: Penélope Cruz speaks and walks like the most perfect copy of Donatella Versace.

The characterization work, in general, is exquisite. It is difficult to see Edgar Ramirez as the already tired Gianni Versace; Darren Criss physically resembles as much as possible the face of the young killer Andrew Cunanan. Even Ricky Martin’s version for Antonio D’Amico, Gianni’s longtime boyfriend, is convincing despite the huge aesthetic difference between the two. About the performances, the latter is more irregular. While Ramirez is handling the message, Puerto Rican star Ricky Martin sounds a little more apathetic than he should on some occasions that call for more energy. About Criss, the former Glee star has in his hands his most challenging role ever and seems to have everything in control: there are at least two moments in the two early chapters in which he dominates the scene, giving life to the disturbing psychopath.

To understand, of course, the reasons why the Versace family chose to try to reduce Murphy’s literary adaptation to a work of fiction – learn more – in all the interviews given on the subject: the first episodes already introduce some problematic dynamics within the family. It was never a secret, for example, that Donatella Versace and Antonio D’Amico had a troubled relationship and this, as was obviously expected, will be addressed by the series – the stylist has already said in an interview with the NY Times two years after the death of his brother who never liked D’Amico that she only respected him as Gianni’s boyfriend. Another point that the series touches throughout the season critically, in addition, of course, to homophobia, is the speculation of the death of a media icon: there are occasional criticisms of collective hysteria and the search to monetize situations such as of the base murder of the plot already in the initial episodes.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story begins with the impact the series deserves. The second season probably will not make as much noise of the first, but it is quite likely that it will come back to signs of major television awards – Penelope Cruz has great potential to be a Sarah Paulson of the time, which led Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG Awards for Best Actress in a Miniseries or TV Movie for her performance in the first year of the series. There are considerable narrative differences that distance the first and second seasons, but instead of being harmful, they open new doors to attraction. In its second year, by all indications, American Crime Story will remain the icing on the cake of Ryan Murphy.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace will feature 10 episodes and premiere on January 17th on FX paid channel .

American Crime Story | Primeiras impressões de The Assassination of Gianni Versace

“The Assassination of Gianni Versace” Review: Darren Criss Kills It As Gay Serial Killer Andrew Cunanan

Let’s just get this out of the way upfront, since the comparison is inevitable: The Assassination of Gianni Versace doesn’t quite reach the heights of The People vs. O.J. Simpson. But so what?

The second season of FX’s American Crime Story was never going to be as richly textured as the first, if only because Simpson’s “trial of the century” was so much more significant as a cultural event. The verdict was a defining American moment, the kind where you remember where you were when you heard it. So through no fault of its own, Versace never really stood a chance against its Emmy-winning ACS sibling. And yet, on its own merits, Versace makes for addictive, phenomenal television. I was hooked from the opening scene, in which director Ryan Murphy and series writer Tom Rob Smith dispense with the titular murder, getting it out of the way early before working their way backwards, tracing how this tragic crime came to pass.

Much like how the first season of ACS wasn’t really about O.J. Simpson, neither is the second season really about Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace. Instead, it inverts the first season’s formula and shifts its focus from the courtroom to the crime spree and the man behind it, Andrew Cunanan. This creative choice isn’t necessarily what I was expecting given Versace‘s marketing materials, which from the very start, have trumpeted the casting of Edgar Ramirez as Gianni and Penelope Cruz as Donatella. And yet it proves to be a wise decision, since to be honest, the power struggle within the House of Versace isn’t half as interesting as the walking question mark that is Cunanan.

So let’s talk about the actual star of the show, Darren Criss. I know Criss is a big TV star thanks to Murphy’s earlier hit Glee, and he has two million Twitter followers and he’s a very famous guy. But I’m a professional entertainment consumer and I’d never seen him in anything before (though I almost rented Girl Most Likely once), so as far as I was concerned, he felt completely new to me, as I imagine he will to a lot of people who didn’t watch Glee. I suspect that those who did watch it won’t recognize ‘Blaine’ once they see Criss covered in blood, a crazed look in his empty eyes. He’s simply excellent here as Cunanan, a gay serial killer in the vein of Matt Damon’s talented Mr. Ripley, but of course, this manipulative sociopath with a 147 IQ is hardly a work of fiction. Criss is absolutely chilling here, and there’s a haunting sadness to his carefully calibrated breakout performance. I can’t say enough about Criss’ work, which will force you to look at the actor in a completely different light.

As for Versace, he’s reduced to a supporting character in his own story, not that I’m arguing, given how satisfying all of the Cunanan scenes are. In fact, the episodes that solely focus on Andrew are the best of the bunch, and the Versace thread tends to interrupt their momentum. Ramirez is magnetic as the formidable fashion designer, but he also plays Versace with a certain softness that serves as a nice antidote to Cunanan’s craziness. You really believe Ramirez and Cruz could be siblings when Gianni and Donatella spar over her role in his budding empire. You can see Donatella is tired of living in her brother’s shadow and eager to carve out her own identity within the fashion world, and Gianni sees this as well, offering her up to the cameras in an attempt to placate her ego. Ricky Martin plays the third wheel of this co-dependent relationship, Gianni’s longtime partner Antonio D’Amico, and while the pop singer does a fine job, their relationship is just dressing on the Cunanan salad.

The series endeavors to depict Versace and Cunanan as two men on opposite ends of a spectrum. Versace came from nothing and built his life into something of meaning. Cunanan had a reasonably happy childhood, and yet, his life quickly fell apart once he struck out on his own. That parallel is reflected in one of the episode titles, “Creator/Destroyer,” which presents the men as two sides of the same ruthlessly ambitious coin. The difference between them is that while Cunanan desperately wanted to lead the life of luxury that Versace enjoyed and most people only read about in magazines, he wasn’t willing to put in any of the hard work to actually earn it.

Cunanan may have been added to the FBI’s Most Wanted list prior to the Versace murder, but he didn’t become infamous until he killed the fashion designer, relegating the rest of his victims to “other” status. That’s how they’re initially presented, too, since we don’t get to know what these people meant to Andrew until after we’ve learned he’s killed them, so it’s not until later that we come to understand how and why Cunanan could’ve done what he did. That’s if you can understand the killer’s warped thinking to begin with, given his knack for telling tall tales. The more lies Cunanan tells his friends, the more we realize he’s lying to himself, and he has no idea of who he really is anymore. He has lost his own sense of identity, drifting from one to the next as he zigzags his way across the country towards Versace’s opulent home in South Beach. For Cunanan, the greatest sin is to be boring and forgotten. Told all his life that he’s someone special, he’s stunned when others don’t see it, and Criss plays those moments of rejection quite beautifully.

The fourth episode of the season introduces Cunanan’s former lover, David Madson (hugely talented Australian actor Cody Fern, a real find) and David’s current beau, Jeffrey Trail (AHS alum Finn Wittrock), and you can’t underestimate their roles in this story, as the latter was Andrew’s first victim, the one who launched his multi-state crime spree. Trail gets his own half-episode (pointedly titled “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”) dedicated to the (mis)treatment of gays in the military, and while this statement of a subplot adds some context to how authorities (including the cops chasing Cunanan) regarded homosexuals 25 years ago, it also feels a bit shoehorned in. Like, what does this really have to do with Versace or Cunanan? ACS tries to make that connection, using cultural homophobia to explain law enforcement’s delayed search for Cunanan, but it feels a bit forced, though it’s clearly something that interested Murphy in the first place.

Versace is much more successful when it drills down into who Cunanan is, at least as much as one can, given the fact that the guy was a complete cypher of an human being — a gifted chameleon, if you will. A people pleaser, he could be whatever, and whoever, his friends/lovers/targets wanted him to be. That was his skill, if you will. The ability to adapt to any situation… though he also had a need for control. He cared how things looked to other people, and what they thought of him. Of course, to fully understand a man, you have to know where he comes from, and the series soars when it turns its lens on Andrew’s family, particularly his father, Modesto. Filipino actor Jon Jon Briones is utterly fantastic as Andrew’s father, who doted on his precocious child, whom he considered more special than his other kids. You can also see where Andrew might’ve learned his smooth-talking criminal behavior, as Modesto was a stockbroker who bilked people out of their money and abandoned his family when the feds came calling, fleeing back to the Philippines.

The rest of the cast is uniformly excellent from top to bottom. Mike Farrell and Judith Light are both incredible as slain Chicago real estate developer Lee Miglin and his wife, Marilyn. When Miglin’s body is discovered, no one has to tell her what happened — she knows right away, her worst fears confirmed. Edouard Holdener also deserves praise as young Andrew, and Max Greenfield is unrecognizable in the second episode, which offers a reminder of what he can do with the right part.

This disturbing character study is based on Maureen Orth’s book Vulgar Favors, and in addition to Murphy, its directors include Gwyneth Horder-Payton, Nelson Cragg, Daniel Minahan (check out his directorial debut Series 7: The Contenders) and Matt Bomer, though costumer designer Lou Eyrich and production designer Judy Becker deserve equal praise for their lavish contributions.

I might as well use this space to address the recent controversy surrounding the series, which according to the Versace family, is unauthorized and full of inaccuracies.

“The Versace family has neither authorized nor had any involvement whatsoever in the forthcoming TV series about the death of Mr. Gianni Versace,” the family said in a statement. “Since Versace did not authorize the book on which it is partly based nor has it taken part in the writing of the screenplay, this TV series should only be considered as a work of fiction.”

I completely appreciate why they would be concerned about the series’ depiction of Gianni, and particularly his health, I wouldn’t describe the series as a work of fiction, though I’d acknowledge that surely, there must be small fictions within the show. Still, I didn’t watch FX’s Simpson series like it was Ezra Edelman’s O.J. documentary, and I’m not taking The Assassination of Gianni Versace as gospel, either. Yes, it’s based on a bestselling non-fiction book, but as a regular viewer of crime shows, I’m fully aware that Tom Rob Smith is allowed some degree of artistic license in bringing that book to the small screen.

I imagine that can be hard to comprehend when you’re as close to the story as the Versace family is, but if they take a step back — and I don’t even know if they’ve actually seen the series they’ve been so quick to criticize — they’d see there’s really no reason to be concerned. Gianni is depicted as a strong leader, one aware of his mortality and a better man for it. The producers, and Ramirez especially, treat him with the utmost respect, and once the Versace family sees the full series, I think their biggest issue will be with how the show sort of manipulates the audience into having sympathy for Andrew, more than it will be about the depiction of Gianni, which is generous and loving.

“There’s always this question of when you’re making and writing this kind of material – you feel like you want to support the fundamental truths. And you are going to get some of the details wrong, or you’re going to have to fill in a gap at some point, where you don’t have access to the reality. I think the only way you are allowed to do that is if you’re supporting the bigger truth… I’m sure there are points where they could correct some of the smaller details, but I think the bigger picture is that this is a figure that we’re celebrating and a figure that we all fell in love with,” Smith said at FX’s TCA panel, noting that that ultimately, “the show is full of love for him.”

He isn’t lying, nor is trying to justify why Cunanan killed, as the fact that he was gay is ultimately besides the point. This show is about a guy who wanted what another man had but didn’t have the skills or tools to get it, so he figured the only way to achieve the immortality he craved was by robbing one of his icons of his mortality, thus ensuring both would live forever, together, in the annals of history. I don’t care how much of this actually happened and how much is artistic license on Smith’s part. All I care about is whether or not it’s entertaining, and on that front, Versace delivers.

This is a fascinating story about the making of a serial killer. A murderer finding his voice. It marks Tom Rob Smith as a major writer to watch, and Darren Criss as a force to be reckoned with. He delivers one of the most terrifying serial killer performance since Christian Bale starred in American Psycho, though Cunanan also reminded me, at times, of The Tooth Fairy from Manhunter and the serial killer in Copycat.

“You know, disgrace isn’t that bad, once you’ve settled into it,” Andrew tells one of his victims. Well Andrew Cunanan may go down in infamy as a disgrace, but The Assassination of Gianni Versace is anything but.

TB gives it an A.

“The Assassination of Gianni Versace” Review: Darren Criss Kills It As Gay Serial Killer Andrew Cunanan

TV Review: ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ on FX

Quite fittingly, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” begins with a sequence that feels timeless. The opening scenes of the first episode, “The Man Who Would Be Vogue,” are nearly devoid of dialogue, scored instead with a lush, operatic adagio that is reminiscent of an opulent, bygone age. The characters are introduced in ways that feel particularly timeless too: Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramírez), lord of his domain, wakes up in his sumptuous Miami Beach mansion — an Italian, baroque confection of luxury, staffed by dozens of uniformed servants and tanned, handsome men. Versace is the type of guy who takes his morning OJ on a silver tray, before reclining by the pool for a pre-lunch constitutional. His life is an incarnation of Italianate decadence, in a way that transcends his own time — the ’90s — to borrow, effortlessly, from luxury of yore.

Outside his haven, though, another story is unfolding. Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss), a skinny, bespectacled kid with a nervous, wiry energy, is pacing on the beach, opening up his backpack to look at the weapon nestled inside. He wades into the ocean and screams into the waves — his struggle pitched at a level of drama that only strings in a minor key can deliver. In between the elements of sand and sea he is reduced to his most essential state: a man on the edge of the world. And then the inevitable happens, in a scene that is shot by director Ryan Murphy like a fateful collision: Cunanan shoots Versace right outside the gates of the mansion.

The piece is the Adagio in G Minor, as arranged by show composer Mac Quayle. That the work is a well-known piece of musical chicanery seems especially fitting — a work passed off as an early-18th-century fragment that mimics baroque composition but was instead written in the middle of the 20th. “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story” tells the story of homophobia in the late ’90s through a modern-day lens, but like so much of creator Murphy’s work, it is also interested in erasing the boundaries between the present and the past, often by heightening the drama of both.

From the moment of Versace’s murder, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” spools not forward but backward. In a brilliant device imperfectly rendered, every new episode of the show happens chronologically before the previous, in a “Memento”-style telling that is chasing some essential truth about its shapeshifting, mysterious killer. And for a show that has Gianni Versace’s name in the title, Ramírez’s (excellent) performance takes up much less real estate than the story of Andrew Cunanan — pathological liar, spree killer and terrifyingly effective con man, who killed himself before ever fully explaining his motives to the police. The FX series is based on Maureen Orth’s book “Vulgar Favors” — which emphasizes not just Cunanan’s path to the steps of Versace’s mansion but also how his manhunt was botched by the authorities, partly because of the simple fact that Cunanan was gay. But despite the law-and-order mechanics of the first season of “American Crime Story,” “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” opts for a story that emphasizes a titanic struggle of gay identity, ranging between the creative warmth of Versace, the corrosive shame of Cunanan’s earlier closeted victims and Cunanan’s own desperate striving. This isn’t a narrative about the mechanics of a trial, or even much about Versace himself, despite “American Crime Story’s” successful pedigree and this season’s subtitle. Rather, it takes the absence of details about Cunanan’s motivations and interprets a character from Orth’s framework.

The bulk of interpreting that character falls to writer Tom Rob Smith and actor Darren Criss, with mixed results. It’s hard to fault Criss for what is the most committed and impressive performance of his career, or Smith for assembling the facts about Cunanan into a narrative about the particular anxieties of gay identity in the ’90s. (Criss is practically born for this role: The actor, like Cunanan, is half Filipino.) It’s more that a murderer — particularly a murderer devoid of suspense, because we see him kill his most famous victim in the first scene — is a hard subject to extract eight hours of material from. That a creepy man will continue to be creepy — or that a scary man will continue to be scary — has a chilling effect for an audience investing in story. By the second time that Cunanan kills — which is, chronologically, the fourth time he kills — his presence in the home of Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell) has the heightened-strings suspense of a horror flick, complete with some of that genre’s fear-inducing editing. Criss may be doing the very best job he is capable of, but it’s hard to take the narrative of a budding murderer as anything more than suspense played for shock value when his sudden presence in a doorway, accompanied by sliding chords, has all the nuance of a jump scare.

More saliently, the heavy-handedness slows down the story — or belies the fact that compared to “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” has much less story to tell. Where “The People v. O.J. Simpson” was a dense, fast-paced story unpacking several characters, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is fully Cunanan’s character drama, with meaningful but limited forays into the lives of his victims. And though this second installment is pursuing different goals, the difference between the two seasons is stark. Even their relationship to the truth is different: In the first, meticulous reporting still left the interpretation of the evidence to the audience, as the consumption of the murder trial became entertainment. In the second, the crime’s nature and perpetrator are known almost immediately, and though space is given to the investigation and the sensationalism around Versace’s death, it’s all secondary to the story’s interest in Cunanan’s development. Even the Versace family — including an impeccable Penélope Cruz as Donatella Versace and a strong performance from singer Ricky Martin as Versace’s boyfriend Antonio D’Amico — are sidelined to follow Cunanan’s journey. It’s difficult to swallow the bait-and-switch of the premise, if you’re not ready for it. Ramírez, Cruz and Martin are so compelling together that when the narrative veers steadily away from them — and their lush, high-fashion lives — it’s hard not to feel disappointed.

That being said, the inverted narrative presents a fascinating opportunity to examine Cunanan’s life as one that progresses into the closet, instead of emerging from it — and at its sharpest moments, the show is able to demonstrate how the spectrum of Criss, like other muses of creator Murphy, is coaxed to a career-defining performance in this role: Slippery, fabulating and mercurial, he’s a ’90s-era “Talented Mr. Ripley.” As we move backward through his life, we discover where his stories came from and how he built his worldview of resentment and entitlement. By the end of the season, our journey accelerates; we meet his broken mother, Mary Ann (Joanna Adler), and his unstable father, Modesto (Jon Jon Briones), which goes a long way toward explaining what Cunanan became. It’s worth noting that practically every performer in “American Crime Story” is stunning — whether that is Briones, Cruz, Judith Light (who plays Miglin’s widow, Marilyn) or Max Greenfield (who plays a Miami addict named Ronnie). Victims David Madson (Cody Fern) and Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock) have some of the most tragic material to work with, and both in very different ways express a deeply rooted ambivalence toward their own homosexuality.

In the show’s interpretation, Cunanan and Versace are each other’s doppelgängers; the eighth (and penultimate) episode, “Creator/Destroyer,” presents the show’s implications in the title. In the duality between the two characters, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” finds an externalization of the struggle of the gay identity: fabulous creation versus destructive shame. But the exploration of themes is hampered a bit by how little time Cunanan and Versace ever spend in the same space; one of their few scenes together in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” takes place during a heroin dream. And because of the need to relate information comprehensively, several scenes in this season are not, actually, in reverse chronological order — which is a little unmooring, if you’re not paying close attention, and unravels some of the significance of the structure.

On the whole, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is not quite one for the history books like the first season of “American Crime Story” — if only because, perplexingly, all of its Italian characters are played by Latinx actors. The second installment of this anthology series hopes to do for homophobia what the first season did for racism — a lofty goal that is left unrealized, in the eight episodes sent to critics. But with an array of fantastic performances and an eye to exploring the complexity of contemporary queerness, “American Crime Story” has produced another interesting history play to chew on — one with a lingering, intriguing aftertaste.

TV Review: ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story’ on FX

Jeff Simon: A few words about Versace, O.J. and Oprah

The second season of FX’s “American Crime Story” is called “The Assassination of Gianni Versace.” The first was the smash hit and award season bonanza “The People Vs. O.J. Simpson.”

Versace begins at 10 p.m. Jan. 17.

It confronts a specific period’s homophobia directly in a way that, despite the geometrically progressing acceleration of the subject everywhere, is still not all that common. Which is why, in its way, some will see it as brave, even now when gay subject matter has been routine for decades all over television.

But that is the whole point of Ryan Murphy’s “American Crime Story” this time around.

The nine-part limited series is based on the 2008 book “Vulgar Favors: Gianni Versace and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History” by Maureen Orth, the brilliant Vanity Fair reporter who is the widow of Tim Russert and the mother of Luke Russert.

Versace was murdered in 1997 in front of his Miami Estate by the disturbed serial killer Andrew Cunanan who, said Orth recently at a New York screening, “wanted to be everything Versace was but he wasn’t willing to do the work for it. The idea that he was willing to kill for fame – there’s a line from there to getting famous on a sex tape like the Kardashians down to becoming president of the United States because you’re a reality TV star.”

Cunanan’s killing for fame seems more than a little related to the motivations of Mark David Chapman’s murder of John Lennon.

If you read about that advance presentation in a New York theater, you come up with what sounds like a mission statement from Murphy that seems at odds with Orth’s tough social and media criticism.

Says Murphy “We’re trying to understand the psychology of someone who could be drawn to do those deeds.”

The trouble, of course, is that there is an immense difference between the amount of fame possessed by Versace, even at his “designer to the stars” zenith, and Simpson, even during the lowest point of America’s public obsession with his wife’s savage murder.

That too, is related to the relative lack of passion in investigation of crimes in the LGBT community. At its base though, we’re talking about the apogee of fame that can be achieved by a fashion designer, however ubiquitous his clients, compared to that achieved by a great football star, decent sportscaster, commercial spokesman and playful comic actor.

O.J. was in American living rooms and bedrooms running through airports while little old ladies shouted “Go, O.J. go.” If Versace had been in nightly TV commercials, things would have been different. What we see in the opening minutes of the new Versace series is a picture opposite to that of a populist American hero. Murphy’s “Versace,” in that opening episode, is nothing so much as a late-20th century version of a Venetian prince up to his receded hairline in impossible luxury. The act of waking up in the morning and being served his morning orange juice seems to epitomize the luxury of a Medici.

Even so we’re talking about about American fame on a vastly lower level than O.J., even before the obsession with the murder and trial began.

And that makes “Versace’s” decision to tell its tale the way it does almost fatal. It eventually gets very interesting. But it takes a while. It isn’t easy to stick with it. There’s no question that the figure who should command attention is his killer, with all his crimes and his pathology.

But its very title and its opening episode concentrate on what it presumes to be its chief appeal: the celebrity fashion designer so tragically murdered and the subsequent complexity of the fight over his business.

Whatever it made as a Vanity Fair story or book, it seems a good deal less on television.

The first thing we see is Edgar Ramirez, as Versace, living in sensual Miami luxury contrasted with the murderous stalking and psychological instability of Cunanan.

You don’t get to the juicy subjects the series concerns until you’ve gotten rid of the crime itself which didn’t begin to obsess America the way Nicole Brown Simpson’s and Ron Goldman’s murders did.

Murphy is a fascinating figure in American television, an authentic gay grandee provocateur of the medium. He’s reported himself gay since high school and much of what he does is saturated with gay themes and what some would decorously call “camp” concerns (“Feud”). His new series “9-1-1” began, on its opening night, with the husband of the character played by Angela Bassett telling his two sons at breakfast that he has, in middle age, figured out that he was gay.

What bowls almost everyone over about Murphy is his extraordinary success at casting his productions. Even his new “9-1-1” series stars Bassett, Peter Krause and Connie Britton which is a terrific cast for something that is little more than a 21st century version of the old TV series “Emergency” (which Michael Arlen once wittily called “training television” for children).

The casting of “The People Vs. O. J. Simpson” was little short of sensational even before anyone got a look at the thing. And then it became legendary no matter how debatable – Cuba Gooding Jr. as O.J., John Travolta as Robert Shapiro, Courtney B. Vance as Johnnie Cochran, Nathan Lane as F. Lee Bailey, Sarah Paulson as Marcia Clarke and Sterling K. Brown as Christopher Darden. That cast received awards and acclaim all over the place. It remains one of the best casts ever assembled for a TV drama.

And yet another reason why the newest follow up in Murphy’s “American Crime Story” series is nothing if not a disappointment.

Jeff Simon: A few words about Versace, O.J. and Oprah

‘Versace’ had something Cunanan would kill for: Fame

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The bar was already set especially high for the second installment of “American Crime Story” by the critical and popular success of last year’s “The People v. O. J. Simpson.” From the long white Bronco chase along the Los Angeles freeways to the gavel-to-gavel coverage of Simpson’s trial, much of the nation had followed the case from beginning to end, all but guaranteeing a sizable audience for the dramatization. Critical raves, Emmys and other awards only added to its success.

Unlike Simpson, the central character in the FX anthology series’ second season was not well-known at all, but his obsessive desire to change that drove him to kill one of the most famous fashion designers in the world. “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” whose nine-episode season premieres Wednesday, Jan. 17, may not get “Simpson”-level ratings, but it takes the series, loosely based on a book by Maureen Orth, to another level altogether. Though at times excruciating to watch, it is a riveting and provocative indictment of both homophobia and, on a larger level, our obsessive fascination with celebrity, both real and manufactured.

In fact, the show’s new season is even more about celebrity than the first. Versace (Edgar Ramírez) has it, uses it, wallows in it. His boldly opulent, neo-baroque fashion designs reflect it, taunt wealthy customers with it. Celebrity is what Versace’s boyfriend, Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin), uses to entice attractive young men to follow him from Miami clubs to Versace’s villa. Sometimes Versace is part of the ensuing menage. Other times, he keeps working while the sex continues in the background, almost as if he is feeding directly off its energy as he creates his designs.

Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) learns from his con man father, Modesto (Jon Jon Briones), that appearance is everything — that it doesn’t matter who you are inside or what you actually accomplish in life: As long as you look and act the part, you can pretend to be anyone you want to be. Let others work hard for success: If you’re smart and inventive, you can get there simply through elaborate pretense.

We meet Cunanan on a sun-bleached morning on the beach as Versace is returning to his gated palazzo after a short walk to buy the newspaper. Cunanan walks calmly forward, raises his arm and shoots, killing Versace and creating the small red waterfall on the villa steps that we will see next to crime markers when the murder is covered by TV news. A turtle dove is collateral damage. Later, in a singularly over-the-top scene, the camera pulls back in the morgue to show Versace’s body on a table, and then, in the foreground, that of the bird. Although the actual bird was gray, it becomes tellingly white in the TV version.

From that shocking beginning, screenwriter Tom Rob Smith tells the story of Cunanan’s life in extended flashback, showing us how his father doted on him to the exclusion of his other children and wife, and how Cunanan began lying from an early age to hide his family’s lack of status and wealth. He was a show-off at school and later as an attractive young man who pathologically reinvented his biography to get him closer to older men, in particular. Like a character in Dickens or Fitzgerald, Cunanan wanted to belong.

Smith’s reverse chronology is fundamental to the success of “Versace” and why it is often excruciating to watch. We know what will happen to each of his victims as he makes his way toward Miami.

Cunanan goes first to Minneapolis because he is in love, or what he convinces himself is love, with David Madson (Cody Fern). We already know how Madson and Cunanan met, and we know what will happen to him. Cunanan all but holds him hostage in his own loft as they wait for Madson’s friend Jeff Trail (Finn Wittrock) to arrive.

Although the names of Trail and Madson aren’t well known, we know who they are by this point in the story. We know Madson is a gifted, kind and ambitious young architect. We know that Trail struggled trying to hide his sexuality as a career naval officer and having to leave the Navy broke his heart. That knowledge informs our reactions as we see them moving toward inevitability. Cunanan blames Trail for the fact that Madson refuses to be the “man of my dreams.”

From Minneapolis, Cunanan goes to Chicago where Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell) is alone in the richly appointed home he shares with his wife, Marilyn (Judith Light), who has her own cosmetics empire. Miglin is deeply closeted. Does Marilyn know? She is stoic, cold, micro-focused on detail when she returns from a business trip to find her husband dead. At this point, it is redundant to say this about any Judith Light performance, but she is extraordinarily brilliant in showing Marilyn’s herculean effort to bottle her roil of emotions, her shame, her pain, the loss of her husband, of course, but also the game of pretense they carried on for years.

While Smith is telling Cunanan’s story, he is telling Versace’s as well. The two stories couldn’t be more unalike, but there is a common thread here: Versace wants his work to be noticed, and to accomplish that, he has to be noticed himself. And like Cunanan, artifice is a key ingredient to making that happen. Until he made what was then a bold decision to come out in an interview with the Advocate, Versace was coy and protective about his sexuality. When he tells his sister, Donatella (Penelope Cruz) that he’s going to come out, she tries to dissuade him, reminding him of how Perry Ellis, his body ravaged with an illness that his representatives refused to name, had to be helped onto the runway for one of his final fashion shows. Donatella is sure Versace’s revelation will kill his business.

The moment Versace comes out, the thread he unknowingly had in common with Cunanan is severed. Cunanan was incapable of telling or being the truth. Versace is strengthened by it, and so is his brand.

The quality of Smith’s script is honored effectively through the direction of the series, by Matt Bomer, Gwyneth Horder-Payton and series creator Ryan Murphy, and through exquisite performances, beginning with that of Darren Criss. His national tour of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” showed there was more to him than the singing, dancing charmer of “Glee,” but nothing he’s done compares to his work here. In fact, he uses that charm as the base for Cunanan’s twisted personality. We may have read the papers and watched new accounts of the killing spree and wondered how anyone could have been taken in by such a malevolent poseur. The answer is in Criss’ Emmy-worthy performance.

Ramírez is equally convincing as Versace. His physical resemblance to the designer is uncanny, but the performance is what makes the story so credible. We see the man behind the public figure, a man who loves beauty and who comes to understand what Cunanan never can, that truth is beauty. Wittrock, Briones, Fern and Farrell contribute mightily to the production. Cruz does a decent job as Donatella, although she never manages to keep her natural Castilian accent under control playing an Italian woman. No matter, Cruz is convincing as the one person Gianni could trust more than any other, and, as we know, the woman who would take control of his business after his death.

From the outset, what Cunanan wanted to be was famous. He wanted people to pay attention to him and to remember him. In his final moments on that houseboat off Collins Avenue, did he think he was guaranteeing cultural immortality by taking his own life? If so, he was wrong there as well. The fact that he is not Simpson, that it will probably take you a minute or two to recall the name of Versace’s killer, is one reason why “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is more than just the story of a loser on a killing spree.

‘Versace’ had something Cunanan would kill for: Fame

26 TV shows to watch in 2018

American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, FX, Jan. 16

Let’s be honest: The triumph of American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson is hard to top. For its second installment, creator Ryan Murphy took on the story of Andrew Cunanan, the 27-year-old serial killer whose sadistic months-long murder spree culminated in the shooting death of designer Gianni Versace outside his mansion in Miami. Darren Criss steals the show as Cunanan, and there are star turns from Penelope Cruz (as Donatella Versace) and — most intriguingly — Ricky Martin, whose rich performance as Versace’s lover has painful resonances with his own history as a closeted star until he came out in 2010. The show’s pilot is gorgeous and lives up to its name, but by the fourth or fifth episode, it’s drifted so far from Versace that it’s unclear why it’s named for him at all. If you’re hoping for insight into Versace as a person or a brand, you’ll likely come away disappointed. But if you overlook the title, this is a fascinating show about a serial killer and how homophobia structured everything from fashion to business to criminal investigations in the ‘90s.

26 TV shows to watch in 2018

American Crime Story: Versace Review: Season 2 Is OK, But It’s No O.J.

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Season 2 of FX’s American Crime Story has big gloves shoes to fill. Ryan Murphy’s true-crime anthology kicked off in spectacular fashion with The People v. O.J. Simpson, which injected fresh drama into the infamous Trial of the Century on its way to nine Emmys. Two years later, ACS is finally back with The Assassination of Gianni Versace — debuting Wednesday, Jan. 17 at 10/9c — and though the new season does offer some excellent acting and a sumptuous visual flair, it falls short of the very high bar that O.J. set.

The 1997 murder of revered fashion designer Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez) at the hands of serial killer Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) is a lesser-known case than O.J.’s, and Murphy and writer Tom Rob Smith (London Spy) tell a much different story here, trading the drab L.A. courtroom scenes of O.J. for the colorful environs of Miami’s South Beach. Versace’s opulent mansion is a study in decadence, drenched in saturated hues and loudly contrasting patterns, and the series itself follows suit: It’s almost operatic, and filled with grand emotional gestures. A triumph of set design and cinematography, Versace is a feast for the eyes… even when the storytelling leaves you hungry for more.

The premiere opens with a masterfully tense recreation of Versace’s murder, then backpedals to tell us how he happened to cross paths with his killer. (The luxurious trappings of Versace’s life stand in stark contrast to Cunanan’s life as an aimless drifter.) Really, though Versace’s name is in the title, this is Andrew Cunanan’s story, detailing his previous murders and how he managed to elude authorities for months. As a result, the bulk of the season falls on Criss’ shoulders — and the Glee alum responds with a riveting, chilling performance.

Cunanan is a fascinating character: a hustler, seducing older men and stealing their money, and a compulsive liar, constantly spinning impressive lies about his past. (“I tell people what they need to hear,” he explains early on.) Criss uses his natural charms as a finely honed weapon here, showing us how Cunanan was able to fake his way through life for so long, while also giving us fleeting glimpses of the crushing loneliness lying underneath. Plus, he doesn’t shy away from Cunanan’s ugly brand of sadism. A scene of Cunanan wrapping an elderly client’s face in duct tape to the strains of Phil Collins — part American Horror Story, part American Psycho — left me literally gasping for air.

But Versace noticeably stumbles when it turns its attention to its title character. Ramirez does a noble job as Versace, but perhaps it’s too noble; the series portrays the iconic designer as saintly… and therefore boring. Versace‘s treatment of him is just too polite, airbrushing out the kind of warts that make a biopic interesting. Penelope Cruz has real fire as Gianni’s sister Donatella — confrontational and fiercely protective — but her tussles with Gianni’s partner Antonio (Ricky Martin) over her late brother’s legacy don’t amount to much, rendering the Versace half of the series dramatically limp.

Actually, it’s less than half: Later episodes — I’ve seen five of the nine installments — leave out Gianni almost entirely, focusing on Cunanan’s earlier life and crimes. (Episode 3 is a nice showcase for Judith Light, as the wife of Cunanan victim Lee Miglin, but otherwise is an unnecessary detour.) The FBI manhunt for Cunanan following Versace’s death should be thrilling, but it feels flat, almost obligatory, without any of the character nuance that Marcia Clark, et al received in O.J. And the further Smith’s scripts spin away from the central Versace murder — into a Cunanan victim’s struggles as a gay man in the military, and Versace’s days as a young designer — the thinner the narrative thread becomes.

After a while, as powerful as Criss’ performance is, even the Cunanan scenes start to feel like overkill: repetitive and methodical, to the point of becoming dull. There’s just not enough story here to justify nine hours of television. Maybe it’s unfair to compare Versace to O.J., one of the best seasons of TV in recent years. But even Paramount Network’s upcoming miniseries Waco, starring Taylor Kitsch as cult leader David Koresh, does a better job of transforming true-crime headlines into compelling drama. Overall, Versace ends up being an intensive character study of a complicated killer… and not much else.

THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: American Crime Story: Versace has visual flair and a great performance from Darren Criss, but it’s lacking in drama and nuance. 

American Crime Story: Versace Review: Season 2 Is OK, But It’s No O.J.

The A.V. Club tells you what to watch in 2018

The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (FX, January 17)

How did Ryan Murphy and the American Crime Story team ever think they could follow up The People V. O.J. Simpson with anything other than The Assassination Of Gianni Versace? So much of what made O.J. 2016’s show of the year is on display here: a headline-grabbing tragedy, true-crime-lit source material, an indictment of prejudiced law enforcement, an award-winning actor whose performance lifts a public figure out of her eternal state of media caricature. And The Assassination Of Gianni Versace aims to do all of this on a more sustainable scale than Katrina—once planned as American Crime Story’s second installment, now slated to be its third. If anything, Tom Rob Smith’s adaptation of Maureen Orth’s Vulgar Favors is even more human-sized than The People V. O.J. Simpson, telling the tales of two men—fashion designer Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramírez) and serial killer Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss)—on parallel tracks of fame and notoriety, their individual struggles with personal ambitions and demons ultimately meeting in catastrophe on the steps of Versace’s South Beach villa. Criss’ chilly, chameleonic work as Cunanan is the best of his career; in her poignant portrayal of Donatella Versace, Penélope Cruz gives Ramírez’s character both a foil and a confidant, and gives Emmy voters reason to pay attention. [Erik Adams]

The A.V. Club tells you what to watch in 2018