American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez

It's unavoidably filled with sex and violence, but Zicherman, his writing staff, and an ace lineup of directors that includes Carl Franklin and Paris Barclay avoid any exploitative impulses, bringing nuance to every chapter of the story.

The key to making this work (even though 10 episodes are more than plenty) is Josh Rivera as Hernandez.

Zicherman et al don’t just fill in the blanks in Hernandez’s sexual identity; they make it central to his character, using his family’s suspicions as cover for a broader critique of the inherent homoeroticism of male sport. .... Like football itself, American Sports Story makes itself tough to watch. It makes you wish things had turned out differently for Hernandez.

Rivera captures the boyish charm and goofy charisma of Hernandez's public persona, while instilling his moments of doubt and impulsive rage with unsettling force. .... Sports Story is especially compelling when it focuses on the football-industrial complex itself — which it doesn’t do enough.

The show does not get inside the mind of a killer. But it does paint a useful—albeit imperfect and sometimes hammy—picture of the places that the killer inhabited as he took a darker turn. American Sports Story inspires empathy for Hernandez without offering sympathy.

American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez is well-cast, carefully researched, and scrupulous in avoiding the temptation to sensationalize an already lurid case. But without a fresh angle to cast on the tale, or new insights to add to it, the show nevertheless struggles to shake the sense that it’s simply gawking at an infamous tragedy all over again.

It seems like the series is just continuing to speculate on something that we really have no idea about. Considering that Hernandez is a complicated person who went to prison for murder and is thought to have suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), there were plenty of other routes to go down instead of playing up a rumor about his sexuality.