American Horror Story: Cult
Fox, Fridays, 10pm
The proudest moment of my life was when Lena Dunham retweeted me,” says a seemingly nice young woman called Winter in the season opener of the new AHS while she’s being interviewed by well-to-do Michigan couple Ally (Sarah Paulson) and her wife Ivy (Allison Pill) for the job of nanny to their sweet little boy Oz. It’s a line that perfectly sums up the show’s gloriously wry, playful tone, as Winter appeals to the ladies’ arty liberal values. I mean, they must watch Girls, right? But seconds later, when her new employees are out of the house, two-faced Winter (played expertly by Billie Lourd, Carrie Fisher’s daughter), drops the faux naivety and cranks up the child’s laptop to show him some real-life footage of grisly stabbings. Next minute, they witness a pack of clowns slaughtering the neighbours. All of this mayhem takes place against the terrifying backdrop of the election of Donald Trump, and the big theme of the new AHS is how the success of Trump immediately gave bigots everywhere all the encouragement they needed to act on their worst impulses. Winter’s brother Kai (Evan Peters), is the personification of Hillary Clinton’s famous “basket of implorables”. Quite how his obvious psychosis is connected to the gaggle of crazy clowns we don’t yet know, and much of this might be taking place in the mind of super-paranoid mum Ally, cracking up because she can’t handle the reality of Trump’s victory. The dazzlingly bold premise and its fabulously funny, scary execution, is yet further proof that co-creator Ryan Murphy, who we profiled in last week’s heat, is making the most thrilling TV out there.