Ryan Murphy is the high priest of tacky, tasteless television, and this year he has outdone himself with a show of mind-bending horror sure to trigger nightmares in the unsuspecting viewer. No, not his series for Netflix about serial killer Ed Gein – in retrospect, that gory endurance test now feels like merely a starter for the unspeakable terrors served up by his Kim Kardashian legal abomination All’s Fair (Disney +).
With Murphy, there is always the suspicion that his terrible dramas – he’s created a few – are dire by design and that he’s playing a Warholian meta joke on both the audience and on the studios paying him millions to churn out 24-carat dross. Whatever the context or inspiration, All’s Fair is without question one of the worst things he has ever done. Among its many crimes, it squanders an A-list cast that includes not only Kardashian but genuine greats such as Naomi Watts, Glenn Close and Sarah Paulson.
The acting is awful. Somehow Murphy and his co-creators Jon Robin Baitz and Joe Baken make Oscar-nominated talents such as Watts and Close look like they would be doing well to bag a recurring role on Emmerdale. The dialogue, for its part, is so bad that it is surely atrocious by design. “Is that a new ring or are you signalling an aircraft?” Watts’s crusading lawyer, Liberty Ronson, comments as Kardashian’s equally high-soaring legal eagle, Allura Grant, arrives for a meeting wearing a new rock bestowed by her American football-playing husband. “He’s intimidated – weak man can’t handle strong women”, another colleague comments when said spouse is later revealed to be a love rat with a penchant for transgender sex workers.
