Frank Watches: The Shards

Ryan Murphy's adaptation is faithful, but lacking

The Shards has finally arrived on FX.

I can credit Bret East Ellis’ 2023 novel with jumpstarting reading for pleasure again. I’d barely read a book since 2020, opting instead to binge old television shows and classic films on Criterion. But the summer of 2023 was one of the first times that I recalled multiple friends reading the same book. So, I pushed through the 608-page novel and discovered that my once-favorite author (Less Than Zero has been my fave book since college) still had another banger in him. After the rather disappointing Imperial Bedrooms, I was shocked that The Shards was so fucking good. It was my fave book of 2023, and I was stoked for the announced Luca Guadagnino HBO adaptation before that fell apart (will his American Psycho reimagining have the same fate?). I was still somewhat excited for the Kristoffer Borgli version, but that too fell apart. Now, we have Ryan Murphy version. God, help us. Might this possibly be good? Is Murphy still capable of gagging us?

The good news is that so far, Murphy’s TV series is a pretty faithful adaptation of Ellis’ novel. The bad news is that for the first time, I found a Ryan Murphy series… boring? Addictive. Messy. Godawful. Offensive. These are all adjectives I’d use to describe most of Murphy’s television series. But I’ve never been bored. But midway through the two-part premiere of The Shards, I found myself wondering, who cares?