A couple months ago we learned that Charlie Hunnam will star in the third season of Ryan Murphy’s extremely popular Netflix anthology series Monster, which fictionalizes the crimes of some of America’s most notorious killers. We now have our first look at Hunnam gussied up as Ed Gein, the serial killer who tried to make a skin suit out of lady parts. Can’t wait to never watch that on Netflix.
It’s not my bag but there is no denying how popular Monster is. Season one, which covered Jeffery Dahmer, is one of Netflix’s most successful English-language shows of all time. Season two, centered on the Menendez brothers—whose case has been newly popularized by the series and might be reviewed by Los Angeles’s incoming district attorney in light of new sentencing laws in California—is also proving very popular, though we’ve yet to see if it has similar success on the trophy trail.
Season three will probably be just as popular. True crime itself is enduringly popular, and even though fictionalized true crime usually gives me the ick—I’m not a Law & Order girlie, I’ve always found “ripped from the headlines” to be tacky and exploitative—plenty of people eat it up. I can go for it in the right circumstances, such as Zodiac and Mindhunter, but Ryan Murphy’s brand of true crime has never been to my taste, and I don’t see that changing even though Monster season three has a great cast. Hunnam is joined by Laurie Metcalf as Gein’s mother, Augusta—might as well engrave her Emmy now—as well as Tom Hollander as Alfred Hitchcock, and Olivia Williams as Hitch’s wife and creative partner, Alma. The new set photos of Hunnam also reveal Vicky Krieps in an unnamed role.
As trashy as Ryan Murphy television is—even at his best, it’s still pretty trashy TV—he certainly attracts talent. I think it’s because he hires good writers. Even his worst projects usually have good dialogue, the kind of stuff actors can really chew on. And Ed Gein’s story in particular has cinematic appeal, as he is said to have inspired everything from Psycho—thus the presence of Hitchcock in the show—to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to The Silence of the Lambs. He was compellingly gross. It wasn’t just the murders, it was the grave robbing and the corpse desecration and the skin suit thing. I’ll never get over it. His story isn’t an auto-skip on the true crime rotation like, say, David Parker Ray, whose crimes are too terrible to contemplate, but every time Gein comes up, the disgust is physical.
And THAT is what will be irresistible to the inevitable audience for Monster. I don’t care for fictionalized true crime, but the other side of that are all the people who don’t care for podcasts and documentaries. I expect Monster season three to be very popular, and I expect Charlie Hunnam to benefit from that popularity. But for me, this is sort of like the opposite of the live action How To Train Your Dragon. I don’t care how convincing Hunnam looks in character—for the record, about 50% convincing—I’m not watching this. I intend to live my life free and unburdened by Ryan Murphy’s inevitably trash take on Ed Gein’s relationship with his mother. Life is too short for all that.
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