Ryan Murphy does too much—so much so that the vast majority of his output feels half-baked and ill-conceived—but hen he gets it right, he really knocks it out of the park. Let the trailer for American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace stand as example of everything campy, lavish, ridiculous and good Murphy is capable of.
Per Deadline, this trailer premiered during the finale of Murphy’s American Horror Story: Cult, a deranged little show that was, by all accounts, supposed to interrogate the 2016 election, but clearly failed to do so in a way that was interesting or worthy of its topic. What hope we have for this decadent slice of mid-’90s South Beach fantasia, particularly for viewers slogging through that mess!
I understand it’s uncouth to call this dramatization of a real-life tragedy “fun” or “enjoyable, “ but I’m sorry—when presented with Penelope Cruz wearing a bleach blonde wig and no eyebrows rasping “Everything you see around us—this house, this company—was his life. I will not allow that man, that nobody, to kill my brother twice,” in a mediocre Italian accent, what else am I expected to do? Look at Darren Criss trying to be bad! There’s sex stuff! Palm trees! Miami! Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramirez) lying in a coffin as a handful of white doves fly. There are robes and frescoes and swimming pools and Darren Criss screaming into the calm blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Murphy’s dogged seriousness about everything that he does looks like it will elevate this series to arch, dark, camp, and I am here! For! It!