FEUD

It’s such an immersive performance [by Tom Hollander] that you’ll feel as if you’ve moved in with this compelling Capote. .... Jon Robin Baitz’s script endows a sad, meandering saga with novelistic depth and shimmering intensity.

Even at its darkest, Feud fascinates with its dissection of a waning social order. .... And what performances. [19 Feb - 10 Mar 2024, p.4]

This tale of the toxic fallout between Truman Capote and his bevy of “swans” — coutured New York socialite women with a thirst for high-end white wine — is gorgeously shot, spikily written and far too long. But it is worth your time, if only for the performance of Tom Hollander as Capote, one so grimly hypnotic it is hard to take your eyes off him.

Its deft and satisfying first few episodes should please both the voyeurs and the feminists, and more importantly highlight how the two groups can overlap.

Bette and Joan is at its canniest when contrasting Bette and Joan's respective vanities, understanding that Bette's has aged better than Joan's, and that Joan was misguidedly devising, in Baby Jane, the rules that would enable her own upstaging.

Relieved though I am that “Swans” steers clear of postmortem hagiography, this excavation into how some gossipy friends turned on one another is juicy but a tad forgettable — which is, perhaps, exactly what gossip should be.

If only it were fun. The season’s fatal flaw, though, isn’t its mawkishness or its self-seriousness but its lack of sufficient plot to sustain eight episodes. .... It’s a story about a squandering of talent that wastes its own potential.

The best tv series of 2017! I absolutely love the first season and rewatch it for a few times a year. Thank Ryan, Jessica and Susan!

Stunningly acted by the two leading ladies this show shows the corruption and scandal of 50s Hollywood.

My favorite part of season 1 Feud was when it was over. The performance of "Joan Crawford" was so bad, so off, that it was impossible to enjoy the story. It's a testament to Joan Crawford's legend that no actress - not even Faye Dunaway or Jessica Lange - can play her without looking like a parody. They can't speak like her. They can't move like her. They don't have her subtly or her grace, and if you compare their performances to a real interview with Crawford or a movie scene with her in it, you realize there's only ever been one Joan Crawford. And that's all there can be. Some people you can impersonate and pin down. She's not one of them. Which would probably give the old girl a laugh. Not a single person can actually act well enough to successfully act like Joan Crawford (in two senses of the word act). Feud chose to play the fictional "Mommie Dearest" Crawford, the one that's all camp and ridiculousness, the one even her daughter said was "grotesque" and "not the real Joan Crawford." No, she wasn't a dumpy person even in her later career. She was not crude or brash in the way she's played here. And she wasn't drunk everywhere she went. That's the fictional version of her, and it's a shame that after all these years, they chose to go with that version. If you want to see the real Joan Crawford, watch an interview. She's an exceptionally well-spoken person who displays her fiery side with subtly, not brashness. You'll see a glint in her eye but you won't hear her lose her cool. I understand this is fiction - I get it - but you need to at least get the basic mannerisms and tone right, and this show fails to portray that. This could have been a good season if the two actresses had played the characters right, but they didn't, although Susan fairs much better as Bette Davis than Lange did as Crawford. As for Lange - it's wonderful to see her in anything, and she's a tremendous actress, but GD is she not Joan Crawford. She's too old for this role (at the time Lange would have been 68, compared to Crawford being 54 during the filming of this movie). I have no idea why shows don't care about details like his anymore, but they don't. Lange also doesn't have the elegance or larger-than-life presence of a Crawford and is far too old to play the period they're showing here.