Netflix may have sent shockwaves throughout the industry when they signed Ryan Murphy to an exclusive development deal worth $300 million in 2018, the single largest producing contract in the history of television, but you can’t deny that the streaming service are getting their money’s worth from the prolific creator, even if the quality doesn’t always match the quantity.
In the last two years alone, Murphy has overseen documentaries Circus of Books and A Secret Love, as well as producing The Boys in the Band and directing The Prom. On the episodic front, meanwhile, he co-created miniseries Hollywood along with The Politician and Ratched, the latter of which are both expected to get at least one more season apiece. And if that still wasn’t enough, he’s also got musical A Chorus Line and Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story with Evan Peters in the works.
Murphy’s latest project, though, is Halston, which premiered last week and has been nestled in the Top 10 most-watched list pretty much ever since. Ewan McGregor stars in the title role, tracing the life and times of fashion designer Roy Halston Frowick during the 1960s and 70s, when he became one of the industry’s biggest names and a regular creative collaborator of the rich and famous.
Like the vast majority of Murphy’s Netflix output, Halston has been receiving lukewarm responses from critics who view it as another self-indulgent slice of style over any sort of substance, but everyone seems to be in agreement that Ewan McGregor‘s performance is the undoubted highlight, and the leading man is clearly having a ball sinking his teeth into such a showstopping and larger than life character, even if the miniseries as a whole doesn’t quite live up to the sum of its parts.