Another Ryan Murphy joint, another shitshow. Netflix’s The Prom, adapted from the Broadway musical of the same name, is the latest outrage from writer-director Ryan Murphy, and Sam Brooks has had enough. I’ll put this up front: I think Ryan Murphy is one of the worst things to happen to television in the past decade. … Read more
What are you going to be watching in December? The Spinoff rounds up everything that’s coming to streaming services this month, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV+, Neon and TVNZ OnDemand. The biggies Industry (season 1 on Neon from December 2) Think of the finance industry on film and you probably think of masters … Read more
Summer reissue: Ten years on from its first episode, Sam Brooks revisits all the wild, dumb, and plain terrible things that happened on Glee. This was originally published on 27 May, 2019. Ten years ago, a little show from the brain of Ryan Murphy premiered. Up until this point, he’d had a minor failure with … Read more
Ryan Murphy’s new show for Netflix indulges without excesses and fires off shots without finding a target, Sam Brooks writes. Ryan Murphy is a polarising figure in television. After a dodgy start to his career – the tonally bonkers Popular and the famously scuzzy Nip/Tuck – he achieved proper mainstream success with Glee, and pivoted … Read more
Ten years on from its first episode, Sam Brooks revisits all the wild, dumb, and plain terrible things that happened on Glee. Ten years ago, a little show from the brain of Ryan Murphy premiered. Up until this point, he’d had a minor failure with black teen comedy-drama Popular and a minor success with scuzzy hospital … Read more
Ryan Murphy? A procedural show? Connie Britton’s hair? Emily Writes is hooked on 9-1-1, now showing on Lightbox. If you’ve ever watched a crime or rescue procedural and thought ‘I really wish people in this episode would be maimed or die in a more original way,’ well, have I got a show for you! Ryan … Read more
Before American Horror Story, before Glee, before Pose, Ryan Murphy was television’s biggest peddler of schlock. The biggest heap of it? Nip/Tuck, all available on TVNZ on Demand. Before the age of streaming television, you couldn’t pick when you watched something. If you wanted to watch a show that was, quite rightly for many reasons, on at 10:30 PM at … Read more
The new show by Ryan Murphy, Feud: Bette and Joan, hits Lightbox next week. Sam Brooks runs down which great current-day actor is playing which star of Hollywood’s golden age, and where to check out their best work. For a self-identified actressexual like myself, Feud: Bette and Joan is a goldmine. The miniseries follows the making of … Read more
Now one of the most lauded television producers in the world, Ryan Murphy didn’t start well. Sam Brooks was there in the 90s to witness the hot mess that is Popular. It’s strange to sit in 2017 and see Ryan Murphy be a critically acclaimed, if still messy, maker of television. I look at the … Read more
With the new season arriving express from the US to Lightbox next week, Alex Casey tells you why you need to get up to speed with sorority slasher Scream Queens. What’s the story? Welcome to Wallace University campus: where everyone’s getting killed and the cops don’t matter. Exactly 20 years after the death of a … Read more
From Beverly Hills 90210 and Sex and the City to American Horror Story and Glee, showrunners Darren Star and Ryan Murphy are behind some of the last quarter-century’s most fun television. As Murphy’s The People vs OJ Simpson hits screens and Star’s Younger returns for its second season, Laura Vincent looks back at two of … Read more
This Music Monday, Alex Casey finds beauty in the horror of American Horror Story: Freak Show’s bizarre musical numbers. // If there is one thing that Glee, Nip/Tuck and Popular have taught us, it’s that producer/writer/director Ryan Murphy loves a good pop soundtrack. If he can integrate that soundtrack into the diegetic world of his TV … Read more