Impeachment: American Crime Story: What the Must Watch reviewers think

Thursday 21 October 2021, 9:05

Every week, the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows.

This week Hayley Campbell and Scott Bryan review Impeachment: American Crime Story on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer.

The true crime anthology series takes on its retelling of the Clinton / Lewinsky affair.

BBC/Tina Thorpe/ FX

Scott says: "Glossy as hell"

"American Crime Story is a great television show because it takes a big news story that many of us remember following at the time, such as the OJ Simpson or this third season looking at Bill Clinton’s Impeachment, and then explores it from a unique or intimate angle.

"You go into this with a real sense of intrigue because you feel that even though this is a fictionalised account, you learn more about the people at the heart of the story. Plus it is glossy as hell, which makes it distinctive in its own right.

"My only frustration is that it can be occasionally confusing to follow this season because it jumps forward and back. In the second season, which explored the murder of fashion icon Gianni Versace, the story was even shown in reverse! It was a neat trick (which made sense when you watched it), but also frequently hurt your head.

"In the third season, it starts at a key moment in Monica Lewinsky’s life, then jumps back several years later, then forward 23 months to somewhere in the middle. I hope that it doesn’t keep doing that. It can be infuriating."

BBC/ Tina Thorpe/ FX

Hayley says: "Walks the line between trashy and genuinely good TV"

"I love the ‘American Crime Story’ series because each season isn’t just about a randomly chosen crime, they are chosen because they say something more broadly about society. In the OJ Simpson one, it was about race in America. The Gianni Versace one had a lot to say about homophobia. This one talks about the dynamics between powerful men and young women and who the media will vilify. There have been a lot of re-appraisals of the Monica Lewinsky story in the last few years: how it was told and who was cast as the villain at the time.

"I love the fact that the production team actually consulted with Lewinsky on the story; they’ve gone back to her to make sure that the words spoken by her and in rooms where she was present ring true to her. She was very careful when she was working with them to not say what happened in rooms she wasn’t in, because she couldn’t speak to that. I think from the outside this is kind of trashy TV drama, but as usual this goes a lot deeper.

"However, we have to talk about the prosthetics because they are the first thing you'll notice. There are fat suits and fake noses. Clive Owen has a fake nose to play Bill Clinton, and it's ridiculous. Objectively, I should find this very silly because you don’t need prosthetics to do a show like this. I don’t care if Sarah Paulson has a different nose to the real Linda Tripp; she is an amazing actor, but you don’t need a nose to convince me of her ability to play another person. But I find it kind of endearing in the American Crime Story series.

"They always walk the line between being something trashy and being genuinely good TV. They have brilliant actors and writers but they're not at the level of something like Mare of Easttown because they do these silly things which means there will always be a sheen of cheapness. And it has to be deliberate: there is no way Ryan Murphy (executive producer) doesn’t know about this. But once you get past that, it is a great show and I think worth watching."