American Crime Story

This series is riveting, well directed, fast-paced and informative. The casting is marvelous with one little exception: OJ Simpson!! Cuba Gooding is a fantastic actor, but he completely fails to portray OJ Simpsons incredible charm and charisma that actually enabled him to sliver through years of abusive behavior and the cold-blooded double murder. Gooding is reactive and unsophisticated, while the cocksure Simpson is just missing. This is an incredible failure of casting where the remaining characters are spot on and compelling. Why not Dwayne Johnson or someone with the physical charisma and cool? Travolta deserves great kudos for taking this on, but one has to wonder why he allowed the utter miscasting of the major role. At any rate, this is a worthwhile series to watch and it surely is award-rich.

Telling the story of the murder of Gianni Versace (Edgar Ramírez) at the hands of Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss), what's especially interesting about this season of American Crime Story is the narrative structure. The opening scene of the first episode sees the murder, and the show then goes backwards, with each episode set earlier than the previous one, an achronological structure that unifies form and content; this isn't about a murder, it's about how Cunanan became a serial killer.

Within this, the show deals with two interrelated issues; 1) the concept that one must work hard to be successful, and 2) the desire to be remembered. Cunanan is obsessed with the second, but unwilling to acknowledge the first, despite his conviction of his own greatness. His attitude is nicely critiqued by Versace himself ("Life isn't about convincing people you can do great things. It's about doing them"), and the last shot masterfully encapsulates much of Cunanan's deepest existential fears. For all that, however, the season is good, but not great. The last two episodes are far and away the strongest, especially Jon Jon Briones's appearance as Modesto, Cunanan's detestable father, but, overall, it isn't a patch on 'The People v. O.J. Simpson'.

I barely knew about the OJ Simpson scenario so everything about that is glorious while being outrageous! I'd like to see the second season for now I am the middle of season 1, it's quite enjoyable and intriguing. Ryan Murphy the creator/writer is a mastermind for many projects, I would definitely recommend this show.

My only complaint about Season 2 is that there is to much conjecture about Cunanan's relationship with his some of his victims. We see an entire episode about him traveling with David, conversations they have, David's reluctance to escape...no one but Andrew and David knows what really happened in the apartment or the days following, or what conversations took place. Maybe Cunanan had a gun on him the entire time. Same with Miglin and the discussions about his Space Needle, or Miglin willingly allowing Cunanan to tape him up. Things may have in fact been very different.

I enjoyed the first series revolving around the OJ Simpson murder trial, the second series is all about the assassination of fashion designer Gianni Versace.

The emphasis throughout the series on the serial killer Andrew Cunanan rather than Versace himself, although we do get to see a good amount of backstory on Versace also.

We get a real raw insight into Cunanan's psychotic mind, background and his shocking killing spree. It is a very gripping series and Darren Criss played the role of murderer Cunanan absolutely outstandingly and in my opinion deserves an award for his portrayal of this complex character.

My only criticism is the timeline jumps were confusing at times, when there's a week between episodes and each episode centering on a different year and back and forth rather than chronologically, I did get confused at times of what took place when. It did all come together though in the final episode.