Ryan Murphy is one of the busiest men in entertainment. Not content with running the smash hit American Horror Story, he’s also picked up a lot of praise and many awards for shows like Scream Queens, Feud, Glee, Ratched and American Crime Stories, amongst others. Season 10 of AHS recently wrapped, with Murphy unveiling the intriguing subtitle Double Feature and beyond that, he’s about to get his fingers back into true crime with new Netflix series Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.
Monster will feature many of Murphy’s established stable of actors who’ve followed him across various projects. Evan Peters (who’s appeared in eight seasons of AHS) will play Dahmer, Penelope Ann Miller has been cast as his mother Joyce, Shaun J. Brown will portray one of Dahmer’s victims and Colin Ford is set to tackle a character called Chazz. Murphy and long-time creative partner Ian Brennan are co-creators and Pose‘s Janet Mock is on board to write and direct several episodes.
Deadline is reporting that the events will be told from the perspective of Dahmer’s victims, with the show focusing on the psychological aspects of the case rather than the gruesome ways he killed (and sometimes ate) 17 men and boys.
One specific focus of Monster will be how police racism, homophobia and general incompetence allowed Dahmer to continue killing, with the cops at one point returning a naked 13-year-old boy with a hole drilled in his skull to the killer. That’s merely one of many chances the police had to catch Dahmer and the show will span a timeframe from the 60s to the 90s outlining at least ten instances where he should have been apprehended but wasn’t.
Murphy exploring a botched investigation will be familiar to anyone who saw The People vs. OJ Simpson and if he can capture the same tension and complexity as he did there, then we’re onto a winner.
Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is expected to premiere on Netflix in late 2021.