Show + Tell with Paul Flynn
The murder of Gianni Versace is replayed, with his killer larger than life
THE OPENING panning shot of American Crime Story: The Assassination
Of Gianni Versace makes full use of the fabulously fine tightrope Gianni trod at the upper end of opulence, forever pivoted half an inch short of vulgarity. The couturier rises from his bed and gently eases his feet into a pair of Medusa’s head slippers, floating through the Versace mansion in mustard silk Versace pyjama bottoms, plucking out a hot pink Versace robe before making his way to the balcony to survey the kingdom of his design. In under an hour he will be killed on his doorstep, the Princess Diana issue of
Vanity Fair symbolically at his side. 1997, showrunner Ryan Murphy makes pains to symbolise, was very much the gay 2016. When the straight world lost Prince and Bowie, the gay world sighed a familiar, seen-it-all-before sigh, ever the early adopters.
The fragile muscle of Gianni’s fabulosity was etched so hard into two dimensions, can his story ever fully be realised in three? The second of Ryan Murphy’s American
Crime Stories, after a soapy excavation of the OJ Simpson trial, makes a good fist of it, tenderising its doomed hero gently.
Gianni Versace was the American Dream, transposed through the operatic arias of Italy. Like Liberace, Elton, even Calvin Klein, Tom Ford and Tyler Brûlé, he was one of those gay figureheads who symbolised high achievement as a taste reflex. There are inevitable echoes of the Liberace biopic Behind The Candelabra here and I’m sure everyone involved in the endlessly mooted stories of Freddie Mercury, Lee Mcqueen and Leigh Bowery will be keeping a watchful eye over proceedings.
The casting is mostly fabulous. Doppelgänger actor Edgar Ramirez carries the weight of the pathos in the title role but it’s Darren Criss, who turns killer Andrew Cunanan into something straight out of the Bret Easton Ellis playbook of American dysfunction, who catches the eye. Cunanan in this telling was a deranged fantasist and persistent liar but he, too, is given depth. There is a suggestion that his and indeed society’s relationship with his sexuality may have taken some part in his venom. After he unleashes the bullets on Versace’s doorstep, his raging mood swings between horror and humour, as if all life is really a lie. Maybe his was. Begins Wed, 9pm, BBC Two