Meet THE KING OF AMERICAN TV
Ryan Murphy is turning out the biggest, boldest, sexiest dramas in the world
This Friday on the Fox channel, we’ll get to see the start of the seventh season of American Horror Story, the “anthology” series created by super-producer Ryan Murphy, which features the same core cast each year, but with a totally new and terrifying story. In classic Murphy style, the series is shrouded in secrecy, but what we do know is that it kicks off on the night Donald Trump was elected last year, and will touch upon the impact Trump has had on American society. Truly a horror show for our times. But that’s not all we’re getting from Mr Murphy…
TRUE CRIMES
In a few months, we’ll also get to see American Crime Story: The Assassination Of Gianni Versace (starring Ricky Martin, no less), the follow-up to The People V OJ Simpson, which will explore the extraordinary events surrounding the murder of the iconic fashion designer. And next year get ready for Feud: Charles A nd Diana, a drama centred on that dysfunctional royal relationship. And, Ryan is at the helm of all of these. So, who is this one-man powerhouse, responsible for some of the most ambitious and extraordinary scripted shows out there? And how did he end up practically taking over American TV?
HE’S MISTER POPULAR
The 51 year old’s first TV hit was a teen comedy called Popular in 1999, which ran for two seasons and established the writer/producer’s bold, fearless style, addressing issues such as sexuality head-on.
Entertainment Weekly put it in their list of the Best Cult Shows Ever in 2012, and Ryan would return to the high school world in a major way ten years later. But before that, he created one of the most daring and outrageous shows ever.
Nip/tuck premiered in 2003 and immediately caused a stir. Set in the world of LA cosmetic surgery, it focuses on two colleagues played by Julian Mcmahon and Dylan Walsh, and
depicted their sexual liaisons with their female clients with as much vigour as it portrayed the operations with maximum blood and gore. Shown here variously on Sky, Channel 4 and Fox, the series lasted six years and 100 episodes and established Murphy’s reputation as one of the most daring showrunners in television.
The Glee Factor
By the time Nip/tuck was entering its final season in 2010, Ryan managed to convince Fox to make his dream show, Glee. Based on his days as a school choir singer, the show was a spectacularly inventive and audacious musical comedy-drama with one of most diverse sets of characters ever seen on US TV. It was an instant phenomenon, and lasted for six years, during which time Ryan became synonymous with truly risk-taking television. And this was in the days before Netflix and Amazon Prime.
The anthologies
After a rare failure, when Murphy’s sitcom The New Normal – based on his own experiences as part of a gay couple trying to have a child via surrogate – was cancelled by NBC after one season, he steered away from comedy to co-create the first of his “anthology” shows. These are series that tell completely different stories each season built around the same theme or cast members. American Horror Story started in 2011, and its sister show American Crime Story aired in 2016. This year he added Feud to this group – a show that explores the bitchy battles between Hollywood icons Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. Charles And Diana will follow in 2018.
What all these projects have in common, apart from the creative input from Murphy, is a totally fearless and massively ambitious sensibility. There are simply no other shows on TV like them. Sometimes it doesn’t work. His horror comedy teen show Scream Queens was a bit of a muddle and was axed after two seasons. But most of the time, Murphy’s shows are drenched in acclaim, ratings and awards. “I feel, every day, that everything I create, everything I do, I want it to be a risk,” Murphy says. And, unbelievably, he’s got another show in the works called Pose, set in high-powered ’80s New York.
Mr Murphy really is reigning supreme on our screens right now – long live King Ryan. n