The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story

If there is just one thing that The People v. O.J. Simpson is, it’s maddening. Fascinating and involved and nuanced and sympathetic, too.

An enthralling recollection of a tragic mess with a long legacy, The People v. O.J. Simpson fits our moment like a glove.

Overall, this is not a piece designed to “expose” the truth behind the OJ Simpson case. It’s more about how exposed the case was in the first place. It’s also just flat-out entertaining television, filled with strong performances from top to bottom and razor-sharp writing.

American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson understands the nuances of the moment it’s examining, and its critical bearing on issues still playing out in culture today. It might be the best thing that’s ever aired with Murphy’s name on it, and it’s one of the most compelling TV dramas in recent memory.

Insightful and even important as it is, The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story succeeds best as riveting entertainment. Just as with the original trial, it’s hard to stop watching.

Both Paulson and Vance are Emmy-worthy. The miniseries is, too, primarily because it makes us care about a story that once seemed impossible to escape.

Against all odds, this tightly written, sometimes stunningly performed 10-part drama avoids all those pitfalls, capturing the tenor of the time and breathing life into the participants. Not to mention re-creating a crackling good courtroom drama that fiction can only envy.

Somewhat shockingly, this 10-part, limited series quickly proves itself deeply engrossing and surprisingly entertaining, even though many viewers will know almost every beat of the story. Credit a strong cast--especially “American Horror Story” veteran Sarah Paulson as prosecutor Marcia Clark--and writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, working from Jeffrey Toobin’s book “The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson,” for turning this “trial of the century” into what could be the limited series of the year.

The treatment is serious, thoughtful, and an introductory triumph for this American Crime Story franchise.

Through six episodes, it's on track to be one of the best first seasons of television ever made, especially considering the cultural climate surrounding its release.

A remarkable piece of work that carves muscular narrative lines though the tangled legal thickets of the trial while keeping a delicate touch on the chiaroscuro of its characterizations. If ever there was such a thing as must-see TV, this is it.

Best series of the year so far. Easily.

Thoroughly absorbing through the first six episodes made available for review, it fully lives up to the FX come-on: “You Don’t Know the Half of It.”

Though the verdict polarized the country, most will agree on the merits of The People v. O.J. Simpson as terrific TV. [1-14 Feb 2016, p.18]

The FX limited-run series is every bit as watchable as the insanely watchable trial.

The show's ungimmicky and sociological fly-on-the-wall approach — you'd never guess Ryan Murphy of the outrageous "Glee" and "American Horror Story" is the man behind the curtain — is particularly effective, perhaps because the events were so outrageous on their own.

Executive producer Ryan Murphy--best known for “Glee,” “American Horror Story” and “Scream Queens”--here has created his most mature, confident series. He also directed the first two episodes, and his work is free of cheap tricks or gimmicks. The truth is so strange, he doesn’t need them.

Simpson so skillfully shapes each personality that in just a few episodes, they almost stop being real people and become televisual characters. It feels less like a true-crime miniseries and more like a rich, layered legal drama, and ironically, the fictional patina makes it easier to engage with and invest in a story the audience assumes it knows inside and out.

You already know the outcome. Yet you can’t stop watching, thanks to Murphy’s flashy dramatization, which is just the approach the “Trial of the Century” richly deserves.

FX’s 10-part series The People V. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story" is a superior effort, a successful attempt both to vividly re-create the original case and to intelligently reframe it from a more knowing 2016 perspective.

That Travolta’s camp is a weak link actually points to a greater net positive about American Crime Story: The People V. O.J. Simpson. Though it’s beautifully shot, tautly written, and acted within an inch of its life, the series is uncommonly committed to the truth.

The casting is terrific.... There are numerous surprises, including how riveting the tale is in this telling.

A frequently fascinating look behind the scenes of a case whose mix of celebrity, race, and money still resonates.

In some episodes, it's really good, and even when not everything clicks, it's relentlessly addictive, returning the primacy to a story that was ceded to the tabloids long ago. The miniseries digs deeper than you'd expect, poking at the messy intersections of race, gender, and class that so much TV still shies away from, and it will remind you, time and again, of bits and pieces of the trial you'd completely forgotten about.

The show acquits itself well. Despite the audience’s knowledge that the former football star Orenthal James Simpson will be found not guilty (history is not a spoiler, sorry), the series is absorbing, infuriating and, yes, thoroughly entertaining.

The People v. O.J. Simpson isn’t flawless, and it probably won’t stand up to the sort of factual scrutiny that still swirls around its subject matter, but it is ambitiously imagined, surprisingly responsible and practically unerring in tone and pace.

The series is not, in the first six episodes sent to critics, crude or cartoonish but ideologically and emotionally nuanced, with each episode providing a shift in perspective, as if turning a daisy wheel of empathy.

This so-called “limited series” takes the facts of the Simpson case and, by bending and shaping the emphases of those facts, turns it into a startlingly stirring critique of racism, sexism, and the judicial system that still resonates today. To be sure, the series also contains its share of laughs and excess.

Ultimately, watching the trial play out as a fait accompli gives it the heft and structure of a classical tragedy in which everyone is undone by his or her seeming strengths turned to weaknesses.

Travolta's cartoonish Shapiro is the exception, after all, and even most of the peripheral performances court favorable verdicts.

Like the trial itself--and the spectacle that surrounded it--The People v. O.J. Simpson is sometimes trashy, often disturbing, and so compelling that it's impossible to stop watching.

Arresting from the get-go, the performances in this limited series are almost uniformly superb (with one glaring exception).

The first two episodes--which track the night of the June 12, 1994, murders and the day after--are the best of the six (out of 10 total) available to reviewers.... A first-rate cast makes the procedure [the trial] seem as dramatic as possible.

The People v. O.J. Simpson‘s true feat is its ability to build real suspense using moments burned into our national consciousness.

[Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski] and their fellow writers do a good job getting the information out, (mostly) without making the dialogue too obviously expository; it happens at times, but it almost can't be helped. As producer and sometimes director, Murphy keeps the production pretty level-headed-- not documentary naturalism, exactly, but close enough for respect.

American Crime Story still has to live, to some extent, in the shadow of the real events it portrays, but so far it seems to navigate the weight of those memories and cultural touchstones in a highly engaging, incredibly frustrating, and occasionally wonderful way.

The People V. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story is thoroughly, surprisingly entertaining--but not always for the reasons that the people behind it intended.

The show is nourished by Toobin’s contemporaneous reporting, which dives deep into the supporting characters’ motivations.... Some viewers might be turned off by Crime Story’s focus on celebrity and its winking references to the family of Simpson defense attorney Robert Kardashian (Friends star David Schwimmer), of which there are too many. The point, though, stands: the Simpson trial was fueled by fame and, troublingly, generated fame for those involved.

For the most part, Murphy & Co. are content to mine this familiar material for pathos and corrosive satire. There isn’t a bad performance anywhere in this production, and while a few of them fail to rise above the level of a very good imitation (Travolta’s Shapiro is all sculpted eyebrows, puckered smirks, and constricted body language), most of them go far beyond that.

[The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story] often feels like an elaborate stunt, but still ekes out ample nuance, humanity and humor, despite a couple clunky performances that threaten to spin the series into the realm of camp.

The performances, especially Gooding’s and Travolta’s, are over the top, but, heck, so were the real-life events. Gooding and Travolta show just how sensational the whole thing was. The trial captured a nation’s imagination, and, more than 20 years later, it still does.

The enduring notoriety of the Simpson case and memories of the live courtroom broadcasts are enough to hook viewers regardless of the problems with the series. Some of the problems are minor, others we can sweep under the rug as the show progresses, one is unfortunately insurmountable [casting John Travolta as Robert Shapiro].

Even for those who aren't old enough to remember the so-called trial of the century in great detail, this nostalgia-stoking enterprise largely exudes a contemptuous sense of observation. In dramatizations of less knowable incidents, the filmmakers bluntly and mockingly acknowledge the key players' behind-the-scenes travails.