TV Review: The Assassination of Gianni Versace

This afternoon I finally watched the premiere of the 2nd season of the crime series American Crime Story, titled The Assassination of Gianni Versace, airing Wednesdays at 10pm EST on FX.  Each season focuses on a different well-known, true crime in history.

The critically acclaimed first season, The People vs. O.J. Simpson,  focused on the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, and the subsequent "Trial of the Century" of O.J. Simpson.  The series ended up focusing mostly on prosecutors Marcia Clark (Sarah Paulson) and Christopher Darden (Sterling K. Brown) rather than O.J., and was praised for the standout performances of Paulson and Brown.

July 15, 1997: The show opens with beautiful shots of Gianni Versace's Miami Beach mansion.  We see Versace (Edgar Ramirez) eat breakfast in his fancy courtyard, decline to give an autograph to a passerby, and then take a walk into town, stopping to purchase a copy of Vanity Fair featuring Princess Diana on the cover.  We also see stalker Andrew Cunanan creepily watching the mansion from afar.  Versace returns home, begins to unlock his gate, turns to see Cunanan approach him with a gun, and BAM!  Versace is gunned down right in front of his house.  Well damn, they got to the juicy part awfully fast...

We then flash back to 1990, where Cunanan (in teensy weensy underwear) jumps into bed in the middle of a young couple just waking up.  Is this a polyamorous situation?  I'm not sure.  The three playfully joke around, and Cunanan announces that he has an upcoming date with the famous fashion designer Gianni Versace.  Later Cunanan walks up to Versace in a club and tries to talk to him, but he's repeatedly rebuffed (the Versace family denies that this meeting ever took place).  Cunanan also talks to another friend, who criticizes him for not being completely out of the closet.  "You say that you're gay around gay people and straight around straight people", the friend says (I'm paraphrasing here).  Flash forward again to 1997, where Versace is pronounced dead at the hospital.  Reporters camp outside the mansion, and soon Gianni's sister Donatella (Penelope Cruz) arrives.  She changes her mind about taking the Versace company public, in favor of keeping it in the family.  We also see detectives interviewing Versace's boyfriend Antonio D'Amico (Ricky Martin) and learn that they've been in a 15-year, somewhat open relationship.

Even in the pilot episode of Gianni Versace, I can clearly see that the standout performance of the season is going to be Darren Criss as Cunanan.  He exudes a creepy but somehow charming energy whenever he steps onscreen.  The pilot episode was pretty slow paced and somewhat light on plot, even for Cunanan, but I'm still looking forward to seeing where Criss takes this character.  Cunanan murdered 4 other people before reaching Versace's mansion, so there is much more of this man's story to tell beyond Versace's killing.  There is also much to tell about what led Cunanan down the path to becoming a creepy stalker/murderer in the first place.  Best known for appearing on Glee (like American Crime Story, created by uberproducer Ryan Murphy), the role of Cunanan is definitely unlike anything Criss has undertaken before, but I'm thinking that the performance will lead to buckets of awards and a much higher profile for the actor. 

Versace himself appears to be a bit of a side character in the show.  I'm not sure how much we'll see of him in future episodes (will we see his rise to wealth and success in flashbacks?), but the show would be smart to focus mostly on Cunanan going forward.  The show is supposed to be primarily about crime after all, not fashion.  Even as a side character, Penelope Cruz seems to be enjoying her Donatella Versace role.  She actually plays the character pretty straight (much unlike Maya Rudolph’s laugh-riot portrayal of Donatella on Saturday Night Live), and she has her uniquely deep voice down pretty well.  Finally, Ricky Martin as Versace's boyfriend Antonio plays the devastated and shocked partner well in the pilot episode, but it remains to be seen if his acting chops will hold up throughout the season, or where his part of the story is going.  All in all I think this is going to be a good season, although probably not quite as must-see as The People vs. O.J. Simpson.  I definitely want to see more.