Ryan Murphy teams with Brit Easton Ellis for an 80s serial-killer adaptation, while Megan Park refreshes modern YA tropes.
It was a warm and sunny day.
The Shards
The first two episodes are now streaming on Hulu and Disney Plus. Subsequent episodes in the 8-episode series will debut every Wednesday at 23:00 EST.
First released as an audiobook in 27 chapters between September 2020 and September 2021, Bret Easton Ellis' The Shards is a fictionalized memoir of the writer's final year of high school, beginning in September 1981.
The first episode begins on the morning that young Bret (Igby Rigney) watches a Saturday matinee of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. (Which, by the way, was released in May 1980. Ahem.) At the screening, Bret is mesmerized by the sight of a beautiful young man.
A few months later, Bret is introduced to the young man, Robert Mallory (Homer Gere), who has just transferred for his final year of high school to the exclusive prep academy that Bret attends with his girlfriend Debbie (Hayes Warner), his best friend Susan (Kaia Gerber, who gets namechecked in the other show under consideration), and her boyfriend Thom (Graham Campbell), who soon welcome Robert into their tight little friend group. On the side, Bret also has a secretive boyfriend, Matt (Owen Painter).
Everyone is rich, everyone is good looking, everyone is doing drugs, and everyone is having sex. Here's the thing, though: some of them are getting killed by a new-ish masked serial killer and/or a Manson-like cult.
The first two episodes, written by Ryan Murphy and Bret Easton Ellis, and directed by Ryan Murphy (Episode 1) and Michael Uppendahl (Episode 2), are thick with gauzy atmosphere, replete with period-appropriate needle drops, glossily dressed with period costuming and props, and filled with slow-motion footage, so that it all looks and feels drug-fueled.
Through two episodes, however, none of the characters feel authentic in any way beyond their surface appearances. It's like watching music videos from that period, ad nauseum; it's all flash and no substance.
Since I lived in Los Angeles during the period depicted, I appreciate the recreation of the era in its period details, costuming, and set decoration. But there's a reason I was glad to live in the middle of the San Fernando Valley, and not shoved up against prep schools like the one recreated here, nor the people who populated that part of town. Ugh!
Sterling Point
All eight episodes are now streaming on Prime Video. I've only watched the first episode.
As I noted above, Kaia Gerber is namechecked in this series as a celebrity who is sighted on the titular island in Muskoka, Ontario, Canada, where the show was filmed on location.
The landscapes may be familiar to anyone who saw writer/director Megan Park's lovely time-travel coming-of-age comedy/drama My Old Ass, which was also set in that area. Here it's a place where a stranger in a strange land, 17-year-old Annie Jacobson (Ella Rubin), arrives after she is informed that her estranged grandfather, who she barely remembers, has died and left her and twin brother a piece of property.
Annie, her brother, and their father (Jay Duplass) live very comfortably in Brooklyn Heights, New York. After learning about the inheritance, Annie discovers a trove of letters that her father secreted away from her and her brother, and decides that she will investigate.
(A clear sign that The Rich Are Different From Me And You: Annie boards a plane from New York to Toronto without realizing that it's less than an hour away.)
One thing I appreciated immediately: AnnieAndHerBrotherTalkVeryVeryFast
SoYouCanHardlyUnderstandWhatThey'reSaying SoIHadToTurnOnSubtitles. (This is how I am told I spoke during the years I lived in New York City, so it feels authentic.)
Once the series moves past its awkward, very familiar set up -- ooh, you mean a YA show will feature deep, dark secrets and feature teenagers who are wise beyond their years yet childishly naive as they seek to unravel deep, dark secrets -- and the show arrives at Sterling Point, it begins to distinguish itself, especially in the person of actress Bo Bragason, who embodies the high-spirited character of Oona with great enthusiasm.
Yes, prospective kissing partners enter the scene, and, like every other Prime Video YA series, romance and heartbreak inevitably threaten the merriment, but after watching Megan Park's The Fallout and My Old Ass, I feel confident that she will twist and tweak the formula for something refreshingly rewarding, once I have sufficient time to watch the other seven episodes.
Plus: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, so how bad can it be?
Now Streaming celebrates independent and international genre films and television shows that are newly available on legal streaming services.