fx
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“An Opportunity to Look at How True-Crime Storytelling Can Affect Reality”: Marc Smerling on Reinvestigating Errol Morris’s Reinvestigation in A Wilderness of Error
Marc Smerling’s true crime docuseries for FX, A Wilderness of Error, debuting September 25, is a deep-dive reinvestigation of the case of convicted murderer Jeffrey MacDonald, who has spent the past nearly four decades serving time for the 1970 killing of his wife and two young daughters – a gruesome triple homicide that the onetime Army surgeon and Green Beret blamed (and still blames) on Manson Family copycats. The five-part series is based on Errol Morris’s non-fiction book A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald, a deep-dive reinvestigation of the case – specifically the case laid out by […]
by Lauren Wissot on Sep 24, 2020 -
LIFE IS FUNNY, BUT NOT REALLY: FX’S LOUIE
Welcome to part one of a series in which I’ll be highlighting some of 2011’s boldest, most inventive television. Each of the shows that I’ll be writing about are helping to redefine the artistic possibilities of television as a medium. And where better to start than with FX’s Louie, the most consistently surprising half-hour on TV. Twenty years ago Seinfeld built a reputation on the claim that it was a “show about nothing.” Whereas other sitcoms of the era defined themselves through high-concept premises, outrageous characters, and cheap, saccharine “will-they-or-won’t-they” tactics, Seinfeld followed four unlikable, unremarkable friends through the tiresome travails of everyday […]
by Jane Schoenbrun on Dec 5, 2011
