Ryan Murphy turns his idiosyncratic focus to Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story
From Glee to American Horror Story, TV’s most prolific provocateur has built a career out of turning cultural obsessions into deliciously dark drama
TV writer, director and producer Ryan Murphy is a one-man cultural juggernaut. Like our own Russell T Davies on steroids, Murphy’s prolific, sometimes dizzying ‘investigations of the other’ (from Glee and Nip/Tuck to Pose and numerous true crime, showbiz and horror anthologies) balance titillation and tragedy like no other.
His path to the top of the TV game has been a strange one. A former journalist and media grifter, he got his big break when he sold an unmade film script to Steven Spielberg. The cash allowed him to co-create Nip/Tuck, inspired by his earlier unpublished investigations into the world of plastic surgery. His zeitgeisty obsession with singing teenagers then led him to create Glee. Six seasons and 40 Emmy nominations later, Murphy was an unstoppable force despite having spent some of that time unexpectedly pivoting into horror (American Horror Story).
Since then, Murphy has pocketed a cool £300 million in a 2018 deal with Netflix and gone on to dominate the small screen. With the exception of his dreary 9/11 franchise, his oeuvre is noticeable in that it plays to a liberal, pro-representation base. Murphy uses fictional and real-life cultural touchstones and clichés (Ratched, Halston, Capote Vs The Swans) to tell a very un-Maga history of the US, one that derides the conspiratorial authority of the right. And now with Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, he gives us the ultimate tale of disobedience of one’s elders not betters.
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is on Netflix from Thursday 17 September.