LOS ANGELES -- Last year, an utterly underwhelming fall TV season from the broadcast networks was saved by a new cable-TV series, HBO's Boardwalk Empire, that blew the competition away. This year, another sub-par fall season again will be redeemed by an innovative, exciting cable newcomer -- this time by FX's American Horror Story, which was previewed for TV critics Tuesday night.
Without question, it's THE new show of the fall TV season. It's so good, it's scary. And it's so scary, it's good...
American Horror Story, which launches Oct. 5 at 10 p.m. ET (make plans accordingly), is co-created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, the team behind FX's Nip/Tuck and Fox's Glee. Returning to their original roost, this new series is based upon the most familiar of horror plots: a family moves into a haunted house, and bad things happen.
But while the premise is conventional, and the knowing nods to everything from The Shining (with its aggressively sexy spectre, right) and Don't Look Now to The Amityville Horror are there for the finding, most of American Horror Story is breathtakingly bold and daringly different. For a basic cable series, it pushes limits, and redefines them, but without getting into gratuitous gore or needless nudity territory.
Previous shows in the Murphy-Falchuk canon have been cast mostly by relative unknowns who became stars as a result of their work on that series. For American Horror Story, those creators took the opposite approach, and have cast the show with an almost absurdly talented group of familiar performers.
Start with Connie Britton from TV's Friday Night Lights as Vivien Harmon, who moves with her psychiatrist husband Ben (Dylan McDermott from The Practice) and their daughter to a distress-sale haunted house in Los Angeles. The husband has been unfaithful, the wife has had fertility problems, and those issues don't necessarily vanish once they relocate.
Britton, alone, would be enough to propel any new drama series. ("I've been in a pretty good marriage for the last five years," she told critics before Tuesday night's screening, referring to her Friday Night Lights role as Tami Taylor. "Why not mix it up a little bit?") McDermott, too, is a strong, compelling actor -- but look who shows up as support...
Start with Frances Conroy, from Six Feet Under, as the creepy resident housekeeper. Add Denis O'Hare, the Louisiana vampire lord from True Blood, as a previous resident of the house. Then, as a capper, seal the deal with the singularly unsettling neighbor, played by the great Jessica Lange. What a casting coup. What a role. What a performance.
I don't want to review American Horror Story now, but I do want to identify three of its probable claims for greatness.
One, the music and the opening credits are uniquely mood-setting and attention-demanding.
Two, it's one of the most successful meldings of sexiness and creepiness ever put on screen.
And three, the whole thing is so scary that when my set-on-vibrate cell phone went off about halfway through the screening, I jumped so far out of my seat, critics on both sides made fun of me afterward.
Maybe that's the best advance compliment of all I can give to this new horror series:
American Horror Story won't keep you on the edge of your seat.
It'll knock you completely out of it.