Please take a moment to check out this amazing charity event. @mrrpmurphy continues to be a leader in the fight for good. His dedication is inspiring, both on and off set. Thank you Ryan! ❤️ From Ryan:
“My company is raising money for the Actors Fund COVID-19 Emergency Fund. The Fund serves everyone in film, theater, television, music, opera, radio and dance with programs including social services and emergency financial assistance, health care and insurance counseling, housing, and secondary employment and training services. Since March 18, The Actors Fund has distributed more than $7,528,663 to 6,382 people! Go to the link in my bio to bid and win!” -Full link will appear in my bio as well!
Television has no shortage of “ripped from the headlines” programming, and it’s unclear if anyone was asking for Ryan Murphy’s take on O.J. Simpson. But American Crime Story season one found new perspectives on a case we thought we understood while retaining its soapy appeals, threading the true-crime needle to critical acclaim and sweeping the Emmys. And while it saw lower ratings, the second season about the assassination of Gianni Versace is perhaps more remarkable, using the “celebrities” involved as a Trojan horse to a strikingly queer and unflinching investigation of Andrew Cunanan and his less-famous victims. While the anthology series may be about the past, it felt deeply relevant to the 2010s, anchored by some of the decade’s very best performances from Sarah Paulson and Darren Criss. [Myles McNutt]
mrrpmurphy: I cannot tell you how humbled, thrilled and surprised I was this morning when Gold Derby's Chris Beachum dropped me a kind note congratulating me on sweeping the Gold Derby TV Decade Awards. Gold Derby voters were asked to vote for the best of television from 2010-2019. Shows I produced and directed won Best Limited Series, Best TV Movie, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress -- a clean sweep (we also nabbed Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy). Making this even more meaningful to me is the fact that the last time this happened, it was my idol Mike Nichols whose productions of "Angels in America" and "Wit" dominated these awards in the 2000-2009 period. I am so thankful to all the Gold Derby voters, Tom O’Neil and my producers and writers and actors and directors who worked so hard to make these productions not just great but impactful. This decade has just flown by. I remember 2010 when it all started with "Glee." I felt so new to the game then, winning anything with one project let alone several seemed like an impossible dream to me. Thanks to everyone again, and here's to the next decade.
Old favourites: Rob Doyle on a year of his best loved books
The most upsetting and unexpectedly profound art experience I’ve had lately was watching the 2018 TV series The Assassination of Gianni Versace. A riveting study in shame, self-loathing and damnation, the series set itself an audacious narrative and moral challenge: it began in media res with the preppy, erudite serial killer Andrew Cunanan committing acts so repugnantly vicious they put him beyond any hope of redemption, and then, by way of a slow-burning reverse chronology, lured its audience into a disturbed empathy with him.
No less provocative was the show’s flirtation with nihilism in consciously positioning itself – and its audience – within the same symbiotic matrix of mass-media violence and voyeurism it interrogated, by exploiting the trauma of lives already shattered by Cunanan’s actions in an entertainment that was as lurid as it was politically sophisticated.
The book that did much of the heavy lifting the series drew from is reporter Maureen Orth’s extensive account of Andrew Cunanan’s life and killing spree, and the resultant manhunt and media carnival. Vulgar Favours grew out of a long-form piece for Vanity Fair – Cunanan’s favourite magazine – that Orth had already been commissioned to write before the fugitive turned up in South Beach, Miami. It was there, after lying low in sleazy hotels and gay bars, that Cunanan murdered his fifth and famous victim, before turning a gun on himself in a boathouse surrounded by TV-network helicopters and armed police.
Though written only two decades ago, the book promulgates certain prejudices that now seem laughable. Cunanan enjoyed drugs and pornography: “Experts on serial-killer behaviour say the combination can be explosive.” The TV series’ brazen nods to the film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s novel American Psycho turn out to be more than a brinkmanship of tastelessness: Cunanan was transfixed by Ellis’s fiction, identifying heavily with his blank, dissipated rich kids. At a gay nightclub hours before he shot Versace in the head, someone asked Cunanan what he did for a living. “I’m a serial killer,” came his blithe, Batemanesque reply.
TV changed more this decade than it had any time since it switched from black and white to color. From who we watched (people from communities that had never gotten the chance to tell their stories on TV before), to how we watched it (on our phones via streaming platforms), every part of the TV experience changed. And there was just more TV this decade, as the most recent Golden Age of Television evolved into Peak TV, and networks and streaming services competed in a content arms race to see who could make the most shows the fastest. This led to both an abundance of amazing choices for TV viewers, as well as an overwhelming sense of option paralysis that sent viewers back into the warm, familiar embrace of Friendsand The Office, the most popular shows of the decade that didn’t even come out this decade.
The sheer number of great shows released this decade made compiling a “best of” list nearly impossible. Conversations got heated and feelings got hurt. (“You haven’t watched Terriers? How do you even work here?”) But every show on this list is unimpeachable, and we’re proud to share it with you. It’s a diverse list that hopefully touches on everything that made this decade of TV great.
(Editor’s Note: In order to be eligible for consideration, a show had to debut on or after Jan. 1, 2010.)
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12. American Crime Story (FX, 2016-Present)
How to watch: Netflix
American Crime Story debuted more than halfway through the decade and quickly became one of the best shows of the 2010s for the way it looked at the past. In 2016's The People v. O.J. Simpson, a cast of all-stars, including Emmy winners Sarah Paulson and Sterling K. Brown, transported viewers back to 1994 so we could see the celebrity worship, male privilege, and toxic sexism that let someone get away with murder. The Assassination of Gianni Versace, starring an exceptional Darren Criss and megastars Ricky Martin and Penelope Cruz, dropped us in glamorous Miami circa 1997 to witness the societal homophobia that ultimately claimed the life of a creative visionary. No other show dazzles the eye and pries open a time capsule like this one, and none other can seduce audiences while getting them to pay attention to important lessons we didn’t understand the first time. — Malcolm Venable
With his breakout role in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” his performance in “American Horror Story,” and his turn as Duncan Shepherd in the final season of “House of Cards,” Australian actor Cody Fern has quickly established himself as a riveting new talent to watch. In this episode, Fern, 30, talks about everything from his upbringing in an Australian farming community to his daring, gender-fluid red carpet style. And he shares how he confronted the ugly side of fame when he was recently hacked.
There are two seasons of American Crime Story which focuses on two different but true events. One is focused on the case of OJ Simpson, who was the prime suspect for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. The second season tells the story of Andy Cunanan, the serial killer who also murdered fashion designer Gianni Versace. Not only do they give us an insight into the minds of the victims as well as the accused, but also shows us the entirety of their proceedings with the police and the law. Be warned though, this show play on your mind for days. Personally, out of the two seasons, we prefer the second one for Darren Criss' stellar performance.
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