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

This tv season/miniseries is something I probably wouldn't have watched if the buzz hadn't been so overhwelmingly positive and curiosity-inciting, so when it became available on Amazon Prime in my region, I tuned in, and indeed, the hype did not lie. I watched the tenth and last episode today. What the series is does is taking something I remembered as a lurid, crazy 90s event and using it for a smart, layered examination of racism, sexism, the transformation of reality into a live tv spectacle at the expense of any boundaries - and doing it while offering a bunch of great actors the occasion to play complicated, interesting roles. (Yes, okay, and some comedy relief in the form of Kato and Robert Shapiro.) It's so easy to turn people into caricatures for the public consciousness. What The People vs O.J. Simpson does is turning caricatures back into complicated people in the case of four characters in particular - Marcia Clark, Chris Darden, Johnny Cochran and Robert Kardashian. (The lawyers are whom the series is interested in most. O.J. himself isn't a main character, which I thought was a wise choice. He's prominent only in the first and last episode, and otherwise the catalyst for various events and moves.)

( Spoilers for 90s trial ensue )