TV Review: FX's "The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story"

The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story is a limited series that takes you inside the O.J. Simpson trial with a riveting look at the legal teams battling to convict or acquit the football legend of double homicide. Based on the book The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson by Jeffrey Toobin, it explores the chaotic behind-the-scenes dealings and maneuvering on both sides of the court, and how a combination of prosecution overconfidence, defense shrewdness, and the LAPD’s history with the city’s African-American community gave a jury what it needed: reasonable doubt.

From Executive Producers Ryan Murphy, Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson, Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski and Brad Falchuk, The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story stars John Travolta, Cuba Gooding Jr., Sarah Paulson, David Schwimmer, Courtney B. Vance, Sterling Brown, Nathan Lane, Kenneth Choi, Christian Clemenson and Bruce Greenwood. The limited series is produced by Fox 21 Television Studios and FX Productions.

-

To be honest, it's riveting to see this farce of a legal process that let emotions rather than fact and evidence decide the fate of the man on trail.

Regardless of who or what you believed, up to a point, the show was pretty riveting. In fact, had I not fact-checked an  event that they portrayed within the series, I would have watched the entire thing with my jaw dropped open as I watched events unfold.

But alas, my fact checking journey showed that they were taking liberties with events and started to inject their own form of opinion or entertainment into the story.

This quelled my open-eyed experience just a bit but as the story unfolded, I still found myself enjoying the recounting of this crazy trail.

If anything, it's a good entertaining piece of television whose casting, at times, is rather incredible. They had to cast people in roles who could pull them off, and in the process, managed to find many actors who looked pretty much like their roles real-life counter-parts enough to make your eyes pop in surprise.

Cuba Gooding Jr. did as good as he could with the role, and that, showing a man claiming his innocence while being quite self-obsessed.

Overall, an excellent production that took enough liberties to make you question just enough to not totally believe everything you see.

- - -

Check it out on Amazon, if you're interested...

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Follow Cinema Static on: