When you’re looking for something to watch on a streaming service like Hulu, the first step you probably take is to look for lists of the best shows available on Hulu. Sometimes, though, even those lists can be a bit too overwhelming. If you find yourself feeling decision fatigue at the thought of having to comb through a list of all the great shows available on Hulu, we’ll happily pick one for you!
This April, you should be sure to check out American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, which is admittedly a very long title. The series, which chronicles the murder of the fames fashion designer, is a fascinating look inside the mind of a killer, and also very much a story about what it’s like to be gay in America. Here are three reasons you should watch this show.
It’s the rare show that feels like it understands a killer’s mind
Although Versace is the title character in this show, the series is really about Andrew Cunanan, the man who killed Versace. as well as four other people. Even as the series focuses on Versace and the drama in his life leading up to that fateful day, the series spends much more time on Cunanan, a closeted fabulist with sociopathic tendencies.
The genius of the show’s portrayal is the way it gives us details about Andrew’s life scrambled and out of order, so that when we finally understand what’s at the root of his behavior, it’s all the more devastating because we already know what he becomes.
It features a stellar central performance
Although the entire cast, which includes Oscar-winning actress Penélope Cruz, Who’s the Boss? star Judith Light, and Latin pop star Ricky Martin, is gangbusters, the real standout performance is Darren Criss, whose Cunanan is both a sympathetic figure and completely monstrous. The show takes its time to help us understand exactly how this man became someone who would go on a killing spree, and Criss never takes the easy way through any of it.
Cunanan is both a killer and deeply human, and Criss’ performance makes us reckon with that fact from the second he first shows up on-screen. His performance won him an Emmy in 2018, as he beat out such respected actors as Benedict Cumberbatch (for Patrick Melrose) and Jeff Daniels (for The Looming Tower), and it was completely deserved.
It’s about much more than just a true crime story
Although the show’s hook is a series of truly sensational murders, Versace is really about what it was like to be gay in an era when homophobia was even more rampant than it is today. It does this b exploring the way Versace’s life differed from Andrew’s, and the way the two men looked for and found love in their lives.
Few shows have ever explored more weighty topics so deftly through the experiences of their characters, and Versace never got all the credit it deserved for the way it made its story feel relevant without every becoming heavy-handed or didactic.
American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace is streaming on Hulu.
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