TV review: Britain’s Fat Fight with Hugh Fearnley‑Whittingstall; The Assassination of Gianni Versace

The Assassination of Gianni Versace
BBC Two
★★★★☆

How odd to feel bereft that a serial killer is out of your life. Darren Criss’s portrayal of the narcissist Andrew Cunanan has been so faultless in The Assassination of Gianni Versace that when it ended last night with Cunanan in a body bag I was sorry to see the back of him. Which feels uncomfortable.

Seeing his photo on TV as America’s most wanted man, Cunanan’s reaction was to smile and drink champagne: fame is all he wanted. Imagine how thrilled he’d be — how thrilled any serial killer would be — with this luscious series.

Nothing, though, should detract from the brilliance of Criss’s performance, blowing the rest of the cast out of the water. While some mid-series episodes were meandering, Criss provided a constant spine of quality in his beguiling monster.

His friend Ronnie offered an insight into Cunanan’s motivation, telling the police that he wanted the world to know his pain, that he’d had to live a lie. When he killed a “bunch of nobody gays” the cops didn’t care, but now he’d shot a celebrity they did.

Meanwhile, Cunanan’s preening father was promising to fly to his son while greedily brokering the movie rights to his life story. Even as Cunanan put the gun in his mouth he couldn’t resist a last lingering look in the mirror, vanity the last thing to go. Criss’s awards are surely in the bag.

TV review: The Assassination of Gianni Versace; The Secret Life of the Zoo

The Assassination of Gianni Versace
BBC Two
★★★★☆

The title The Assassination of Gianni Versace has turned out to be something of a misnomer. It isn’t about Versace’s killing, it is about his killer. Versace is a bit character fussing over dog-collar dresses (and, lest we forget, that safety-pin frock that introduced us to Liz Hurley’s breasts). As a portrait of a fantasist serial murderer it has been mesmerically done, mostly thanks to Darren Criss. His portrayal of Andrew Cunanan, who killed five people before putting a bullet through his head, has been consistently outstanding.

However, recently the show has become flabby. Like many dramas, it has suffered mid-series spread, using more filler than a meal-deal supermarket sandwich (part seven last week being a case in point). Last night’s penultimate episode also went round the houses, but in showing us Cunanan’s childhood and his abusive weirdo father who hero-worshipped his youngest son and kissed his feet when he got into the “right” school it at least brought us closer to the nub: what made Cunanan a monster. It’s a cautionary tale for anyone who repeatedly tells their child that they are “special”.

These were helpful retrospectives, with Cunanan’s broker father being caught for fraud and bolting to his native Philippines, leaving his family homeless and penniless, then telling his son to be a man for once and stab him. The timeline has been messed with far too much, but here, at last, we saw the making of the narcissist as Andrew, aged 11, was given the master bedroom while his older, unfavoured siblings shared. “If you’re a lie, then I’m a lie,” the young Cunanan told his fugitive father. And a lie is what his entire life went on to be, with him hiring himself out to men for sex under pseudonyms while pretending Daddy was a high-flyer.

Running in parallel was a mini version of Versace’s childhood in Italy, with his mother supporting his dream of being a dress designer even as his teacher called him a pervert. The stage is fully set now for the finale and although I’m very queasy about TV shows immortalising serial killers, thereby giving them what they always craved — notoriety — I think our patience will be rewarded. It’s just a shame it’s been about three episodes too long.

TV review: The Assassination of Gianni Versace; The Secret Life of the Zoo

What’s on TV tonight

American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace
BBC Two, 9pm
Before murdering Gianni Versace, Andrew Cunanan had already killed four men, and the third episode of Ryan Murphy’s “true crime” drama focuses on his third and fourth victims — the Chicago property tycoon Lee Miglin and William Reese, a caretaker. Miglin (Mike Farrell from M*A*S*H) is portrayed as a closeted gay client of Cunanan (his family deny this) and is murdered in a sadistic scene, while Reese is killed for his lorry. If Murphy’s motivation with this Versace-free episode was to add depth to Cunanan (Darren Criss), it fails — we still know very little about why he embarked on his murder spree, other than the fact that he’s a sociopath.

What’s on TV tonight

TV review: Lucy Worsley’s Fireworks for a Tudor Queen; The Assassination of Gianni Versace

The Assassination of Gianni Versace BBC Two ★★★★☆

The Assassination of Gianni Versace is in its second episode and Darren Criss as the fantasist serial killer Andrew Cunanan is mesmerically convincing. The scenes in which he drove towards Florida singing euphorically to Laura Branigan’s Gloria (pretty much proof of madness), then, having been hired for sex by a businessman, manically disco-danced around the room in gerbil-smuggler undies as his client thrashed on the bed suffocating because his head was wrapped in parcel tape were so good that I rewound to watch them again.

The programme opened in 1994 and clearly implied that Versace was HIV positive, a claim that the family angrily dispute. The froideur of Donatella (Penélope Cruz) for Versace’s partner, Antonio (Ricky Martin), whom she blamed for their promiscuous lifestyle, dripped with the contempt of someone who suspects opportunism. I must say I’m not really getting the sexual chemistry between Versace and Antonio. The latter’s grief-stricken facial expression often reminds me of a constipated pine marten. But Criss alone, sulky yet calculating, is reason enough to keep watching.

TV review: Lucy Worsley’s Fireworks for a Tudor Queen; The Assassination of Gianni Versace

What’s on TV tonight

The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story
BBC Two, 9pm
Two episodes in for this “true crime” drama about the 1997 shooting of Gianni Versace, and the show is definitely being stolen by Darren Criss’s portrayal of his killer, Andrew Cunanan. As we follow Cunanan round Miami — bizarrely gaffer-taping his face and carrying out disposable-camera reconnaissance on Versace’s mansion — Criss switches seamlessly between self-deluded mania, terrifyingly emotionless psychopathy and moments of gleeful camp abandon. The showrunner Ryan Murphy is successfully treading the line between considered drama and the soapy froth that it could otherwise have been — overhung by only the slightest waft of spuriousness.

What’s on TV tonight

stratfordboye15: Loving this illustration of @americancrimestoryfx by Julian Osbaldstone for the @sundaytimesculture magazine. .

.
.
@darrencriss #americancrimestory #versace #gianniversace #andrewcunanan #darrencriss #camp #gay #miami #murder #crime #tv #fx #theassasinationofgianniversace #graphics #illustration

TV review: American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace; Civilisations; 100 Years Younger in 21 Days; Strike

Ever since I saw the publicity stills for American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, my heart has been in my mouth. It wasn’t just the transformation of the gorgeous Penelope Cruz into the curious plastic blowfish that is Donatella Versace, snapped snout to dolphin snout with two oiled Versace codpieces. Or the uncanny resemblance of Edgar Ramirez to Versace himself, a fashion designer who always felt closer to a mid-level football manager than anyone would have liked. It was because this was the best I believed television could ever be: epic, ambitious, lavish, dark and slow.

I don’t mind admitting that a full nine episodes of beautifully directed zebra print is unlikely to get a bad review from me. Each frame is a tiny crime scene in itself: day diamonds, tight shorts, walnut-lined lavs, “crisis” leather wear and — worst of all — sunglasses at night.

There’s Ricky Martin, brilliantly cast as Versace’s boyfriend, dressed, ostensibly, in the same outfit as the staff. In one long opening shot in the first episode, Versace slips out of bed, eases out of his silky pink dressing gown, goes out to pick up some magazines, only to return to the steps of the mansion, where he’s shot dead. All I could think was: imagine dying in those hideous chino shorts.

As it is, neither Versace nor Donatella is anything to write home about. Ramirez is earnest, crooning, an extra from a terrible Californian wine advertisement. He confirms my long-held suspicion that fashion designers should never, ever say anything. (“My hope is that people will get to know me by wearing my clothes,” he lisps.) Frankly, it’s a relief when he’s shot.

And oh, darling Pene. You’d have thought that, not being able to do an English accent, let alone an Italian one, she might have refused wardrobe’s offer of a dental prosthetic to make her lips look bigger. But no. As Donatella might herself say: more eez more. Cruz, mouth duly stuffed, is incomprehensible. Every single word is swallowed by her fish lips.

By far the most interesting character is Versace’s killer, Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss). It says everything about the tone of American Crime Story that a half-Filipino, half-Sicilian hustler-drifter who killed five men and spent eight days on the run before committing suicide is the hero of the piece. He’s 1990s handsome, impossibly characterless, like JFK Jr or Roger Federer. Arriving in South Beach, he is so wholesome and Seinfeldy, he looks as if he might poo — sorry, poop — marshmallows.

Criss, a former star of — joy — Glee, moves effortlessly from lost little rich boy to “predatory escort”. He describes looks from fashion shows with the same intensity as Patrick “American Psycho” Bateman talking music. He has the otterish sheen of a lifestyle criminal.

The series is from the same people who did The People v OJ Simpson, another sprawling autopsy from the 1990s, the decade crime stopped being crime and became — how shall I put it? — more an opt-in/opt-out entertainment choice. Both series unravel the events in satisfying detail, although you don’t learn anything you wouldn’t be able to pick up from US Weekly.

What you do learn is that America has a unique relationship with wrongdoing, in which it’s never easy to tell whether the real criminals are the murderers, the police or us. Towards the end of the first episode, a man is shown touting the only Polaroid of the bleeding designer for $30,000. American Crime Story says more about our consumption of crime than it does about anything else.

I was interested to read that Cunanan had copies of several books in the fleapit hotel where he planned his attacks. One of these books was, and — deep breath, because links as golden as this don’t present themselves every week — Kenneth Clark’s The Romantic Rebellion, a large picture book about 13 Romantic artists.

TV review: American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace; Civilisations; 100 Years Younger in 21 Days; Strike

Fashioning of a killer

Labels are the most powerful force in fashion. Gianni Versace, the innovative Italian designer who was gunned down outside his Miami Beach mansion in 1997, built one of the industry’s most evocative brands, becoming almost as famous as the Hollywood princesses and real-life royals who wore his frocks. His celebrity made him a vast fortune, but also a big target.

Versace’s killer was Andrew Cunanan, a fame-hungry fantasist and predatory gigolo with a drug habit. Cunanan had sex with men — sometimes for money, sometimes for pleasure — but hated being categorised as gay. Convinced of his creative genius, he resented his anonymity. When the world failed to reward his self-proclaimed brilliance with wealth and eminence, he opted to make a name for himself by shooting a star. Labels can also be a powerful force outside fashion.

Closeted homosexuality and dyed-in-the-wool homophobia are the central wardrobe malfunctions explored by The Assassination of Gianni Versace, the second tale from Ryan Murphy’s anthology series American Crime Story.

Like its predecessor, The People v OJ Simpson, the story is presented as a lightning flash over a darkened landscape, illuminating otherwise hidden features of the culture. On this score, however, the Versace show is disappointing. Racial politics, the trademark of the Simpson trial, is suitable for examination from multiple perspectives. The courtroom procedural format also provides inherent structure. But here, storyline and thematic concerns are more splintered. The giddy whirl of the Miami fashion scene is not a rich environment for thought-provoking drama, and many of the scenes are padded out with campy comedic knockabout.

Despite its title, the show is more about the assassin than the assassinated. Cunanan (played with convincing shiftiness by Darren Criss) had already slain four men before he set his gunsights on Versace. He was on the FBI’s most-wanted list — but a spree killer merely bumping off gay people was evidently a low priority for law enforcement.

Having shot the designer, Cunanan evaded capture for eight days, eventually killing himself. The derring-do of his cop evasion is chronicled at length, while his earlier life is recounted through flashbacks. It’s a framing of the story, with Cunanan centre stage, that glorifies the killer, lavishing him with the attention he craved.

Stealing the show: Darren Criss dazzles as the villain in The Assassination of Gianni Versace

Edgar Ramirez brings subtlety to his performance as Versace, but the character is little more than a collection of histrionic fashionista tics. There are moments when Versace is depicted as a rare voice of reason amid the luvvie babble and whinnying clothes horses. He’s aghast at the skeletal skinniness of supermodels, bored by the solipsism of his socialite fans. Mostly, he’s a whimpering diva, in thrall to delusions of grandeur about the artistic and social importance of his overpriced schmutter.

There’s a similarly cartoonish quality about all of the protagonists in the Versace universe. Penelope Cruz hams it up as an operatically heartbroken Donatella, the ball-busting sister who takes over the family business and narrative. Ricky Martin does fine lip-quivering as Antonio, Versace’s long-term boyfriend. Entertaining though these turns are, they seem to belong to a corny daytime soap rather than the gritty sociopolitical drama to which the series aspires.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace is at its best when it steers clear of the fashion set altogether. The stories of the men Cunanan killed before Versace are told in standalone episodes, offering sharp insight into the complexities of gay life in the 1990s — an era when tolerance of “alternative lifestyles” was preached more often than practised.

Cunanan was a product of social repression and a parasite who fed off it. Ashamed of his sexuality, he preyed on the shame of other gay men. His primary targets for blackmail were older guys, preferably with wives, families and lots to lose. Versace’s name is the VIP tag that helped get this series made, but these quieter, less celebrated tragedies are at its heart. Clever use of a designer label.

Fashioning of a killer

TV review: Hugo Rifkind on American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace

I’ve been trying to figure out the best word to describe American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, but I just can’t get a handle on it. At first I thought it might be “gay”, but that’s not right at all. “Gay” just means gay. It’s no more a vibe than “straight” is. Then I thought it could be “camp”, but that’s even more wrong. Most of the gay characters in this startling show aren’t remotely camp. They’re muscular, toned and dangerous, but also quite often dressed as Louis XIV’s lamé curtains. Best understood, I suppose, it’s a deep dive into the aesthetic of 1990s American homosexuality, in much the same way that American Psycho was a dive into that of 1980s Manhattan finance. Which is not, I’d imagine, quite what anybody expected.

Technically, it is also a sequel. The first series of American Crime Story was better known as The People v OJ Simpson, a show that won big plaudits and numerous awards, yet which was also, at least in my experience, oddly easy to stop watching. This, obviously, focuses on the killing of Versace in Miami in 1997 and could easily be very similar, with gawkers and a media circus and cops and lawyers on the make. It isn’t, though, and not only because its title character clearly has to spend quite a lot of time dead.

The focus is instead on Darren Criss, as his creepy killer, Andrew Cunanan. You may remember Criss from Glee, a show in which he was more inadvertently creepy as an exhaustingly kind and gentle enthusiast of musical theatre. If you ever thought to yourself, “Man, that Blaine guy could be a serial killer,” then it turns out you weren’t the only one.

Last time around, Cuba Gooding Jr and John Travolta led the cast. This time we have Penélope Cruz as a frankly odd choice to play Donatella Versace. I’m loath to be unchivalrous, but it’s like getting Brad Pitt to play John McCririck. Up against her, as brilliant as the whites of his own teeth, is Ricky Martin as Versace’s bereaved partner, Antonio. Versace is played by Édgar Ramírez. It’s a little odd to hear these three Spanish-speakers pretending to be Italian by chatting in heavily accented English, but a greater distraction is the way they’re all blown off screen by their backdrops.

Every shot that features any one of them is like one of those insane Versace advertisements with Madonna in them as a businesswoman. Remember them? She was always on the phone, halfway between buying half the FTSE and having an orgasm. I think it’s actually more of a mid-2000s Donatella aesthetic, that, than a 1990s Gianni one, but crikey, ask somebody else. It’s all bright lights, patterned satin, patent leather belts and expensive sexiness you’ll never afford. Pre-death, Ramírez wakes in bed and strides down corridors more glitzy than a Swiss chocolate box, across a patio decked out with so many houseboys standing to attention in shorts that it could be a Wimbledon tennis court. When the plot gets going, you’re almost sorry. You don’t want to think. You just want to watch.

Before long, though, and at least by the second episode (I’ve sneaked ahead; they let us do anything) it turns out to not be that sort of show at all. More interesting than Versace’s gaudy closet is the role he plays being so uncompromisingly out of it. Out in the wider world the Aids epidemic had only just passed its height and even George Michael wasn’t out yet. Mass acceptance — let alone equality in law — was still far away.

From his palace in Miami Beach Versace existed as a sort of approachable living saint of the local gay community, which itself seems to have been a collection of nomads, lost souls, addicts and pioneers, all of whom had made the conscious and probably painful choice to build their identities anew. The heroin addict Ronnie (an unrecognisable Max Greenfield, better known as New Girl’s Schmidt) is indicative of the more desperate flotsam this world attracts; Cunanan, although very definitely a fantasist and a psychopath, is its extreme form.

The easiest way to write a story is to take the first chapter of somebody else’s and see where your imagination wants to go. The Assassination of Gianni Versace may not go to all the places it feels it should, but that would be a shame. In the US, which is a few weeks ahead of us, it hasn’t quite been the hit of The People v OJ Simpson, but for my money it’s a whole lot more interesting. Apologies for the spoiler (look away now), but history tells us that Cunanan took his own life eight days after the murder. What did he do before? Who made him what he was? Callous as it may seem, we already know what happened to Versace. At its best, this isn’t about his assassination at all, but his assassin.

TV review: Hugo Rifkind on American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace

TV review: The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story; Save Me

★★★★☆

Donatella Versace is said to have been “happy” that Penélope Cruz was chosen to play her in The Assassination of Gianni Versace. I bet she was. Not half. Who wouldn’t be? But Cruz, let’s face it, isn’t the most obvious lookalike for a woman who these days is cruelly likened to Janice the Muppet. So it is a testament to Cruz’s skill that she is compelling in the role, a woman grieving after her brother’s murder, but flint-like in her resolve to keep the company and his name alive. “I will not allow that man, that nobody, to kill my brother twice,” she said through her blond wig and plumped-up lips, which — was this just me? — gave her words something of a whistle.

This is the second offering from American Crime Story and, like The People v OJ Simpson, it brims with class. Édgar Ramírez looked eerily like the real Versace in his ridiculously opulent Miami villa, where it took six members of staff to give him one glass of orange juice. But it is Darren Criss as Andrew Cunanan, the fantasist serial killer who shot Versace in 1997, who is the show’s tour de force. Criss manages just the right blend of camp charisma and obsessive weirdo mendacity as the contrast is made between the fêted designer’s eye-bleeding wealth and the sociopath’s empty life and wardrobe.

The opening eight minutes were terrific, set to Albinoni’s Adagio in G minor and culminating in Versace’s death, his blood dripping down the steps. The chronology switched after that and the story was told in reverse, which was slightly discombobulating. But the stage is set to reflect a society that was still judgmental about gay lifestyles and to chart Cunanan’s descent into deranged violence. The Versace company has distanced itself from the drama, saying it is based on “gossip and speculation”, even though Donatella reportedly sent Cruz flowers. Call me cynical, but this stuff can only ramp up the ratings.

TV review: The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story; Save Me