Critic Reviews
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The explosive extract (published in Esquire magazine) is dealt with in the opener, which, looking ahead, leaves seven meandering, woozy episodes of set pieces, time-hopping, failed rapprochements, a somewhat overplayed motif (cue a mystical swan gliding around in a bathtub).
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Ryan Murphy’s second go at famous feuds focuses on Truman Capote (Tom Hollander) the literary gadfly who befriends and betrays 1960’s socialites he calls swans. The series veers from delicious to depressing, but Emmys please for Hollander and chief swan Naomi Watts.
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We’re hopeful that Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans will provide some juicy scenes among its amazing cast, and that will be enough to keep us watching. But the story itself is so low-stakes that it just leaves us cold.
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Relieved though I am that “Swans” steers clear of postmortem hagiography, this excavation into how some gossipy friends turned on one another is juicy but a tad forgettable — which is, perhaps, exactly what gossip should be.
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The show delivers on the cattiness and the glamor and the factoids, like that Capote served everyone spaghetti and chicken hash alongside the champagne. But it misses a deeper insight into why Capote’s guest list was so revolutionary or how ’60s society was shifting as it happened. Feud chooses easier themes.
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The shortcomings ultimately dilute an abundance of showy performances, with Watts’ Babe perhaps the most tragic and heartbreaking figure as someone who truly loved Capote and found it particularly hard to part with his company.
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Unlike Capote himself, Capote vs. The Swans is happy just to observe this world without engaging in much by way of conversation. It’s easy to tell that everybody in the show finds what’s happening to be very important. Efforts to invest from the outside are more difficult.
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This is a brisk, bitchy eight hours of bitter eye candy that feels like about 120 minutes of consequential content.
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A bore. .... Worse than the structural problems, though, is the pox-on-all-your-houses tone — it feels as if the show is looking down on all of its characters, which might be a choice (to reflect Capote’s viewpoint, perhaps) but if so, is a bad one.