Ryan Murphy and Bret Easton Ellis join forces to show the darkest side of the 80s
The series 'The shards' arrives on Disney+ with a cocktail of drugs, forbidden desire, privilege and violence
Barcelona“One thing is clear. Kids today have it damn easy. Being a teenager today is hard because you have to manage puberty, sexuality, and online harassment. But our generation had it tougher: we had to face serial killers”. These are some of the initial words of the narrator and protagonist of The shards, the television adaptation signed by Ryan Murphy of the novel of the same name by Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho or The rules of engagement. There is, therefore, a clear vindication of Generation X and the traumas it carries.
The action is set in 1981, in an exclusive Los Angeles high school and follows a group of young people about to graduate. That year, however, will be marked by the arrival of a new student, Robert Mallory, and by the attacks of a gruesome serial killer, known as The Trawler. The protagonist –a fictionalized version of Ellis himself, an aspiring writer– suspects that the newcomer may be behind the horrific crimes that are increasingly tightening the circle around his friends. At the same time, he cannot help but feel an irresistible fascination for him.
The story is, therefore, the usual ground for the novelist's proposals: attractive young people with a lot of money at their disposal, but with absent parents (in the best of cases, when not directly toxic or dysfunctional), drugs, consummated non-normative desire, and a latent violence in the atmosphere that ends up exploding and of which no details are spared. It is not surprising that the project has finally been taken up by Ryan Murphy, who has exploited all and each of these elements in series such as the anthologies Monster or American Crime Story.
In a first instance, HBO was supposed to be in charge of the adaptation, led by director Luca Guadagino, another of the big names linked to obsessive and out-of-the-norm desire from films like Call me by your name or Rivals. The project did not move forward and landed at Disney, which signed Murphy in 2023, once he finished his contract with Netflix. For The Shards, he has worked closely with Ellis to make the television adaptation. The novelist, moreover, is an executive producer of the series, which remains very faithful to the book.
A decade under the magnifying glass
As was already the case in American Psycho, the series can be seen as a nostalgic and at the same time ruthless portrait of the 80s. The economic boom – for some – of the Reagan years brought with it a much more sinister flip side, a result of the corrupting power of money. This could be the umpteenth story of hormone-fueled teenagers, but in this case they drive Porsches and live in idyllic mansions where there's always a party and a large amount of drugs, but beneath the euphoria lay a deep layer of despair and lack of expectations. All this accompanied by a soundtrack that takes advantage of the best music of the 80s, with a very careful balance between big hits of the moment and lost gems. The synthesizers – sometimes festive, sometimes icy – serve to punctuate the emotions of adrift characters, while their environment begins to crumble.
The series also talks about the emotional split that Bret has to undergo, who has one of the most beautiful girlfriends in the whole school (even though he is in love with his best friend) while at the same time sleeping with one of his drug dealers and developing a morbid desire for Mallory. “You couldn’t be fluid,” says the series’ narrator, “you had to be two compartmentalized people.” This split between the public and private self is the driving force behind all the twists that lead the plots into a destructive spiral. “Some died, others survived, but none of us came out unscathed,” he reflects, in hindsight.
In the interpretative section, some of the protagonists – still with understandably brief résumés – are more famous for their circumstances than for their acting credits. This is the case of Homer Gere, who had debuted in four episodes of Euphoria – a series that could be considered a cousin to this one – and who plays the mysterious Mallory. He is the son of Richard Gere and the coincidence, or not, has led to Kaia Gerber also being in the series, in this case the daughter of top model Cindy Crawford, who was precisely married to Gere for four years in the 90s. After the divorce, each had a child and now they have coincided on set. For the role of Bret, Igby Rigney has been trusted, who had participated in series such as Blue bloods, The Fall of the House of Usher or two episodes of Grey's Anatomy. The probably best-known name in the cast is Evan Rachel Wood, who plays the mother of one of the girls, a three-time nominee for Golden Globe and Emmy for series such as Westworld, Thirteen or Mildred Pierce.
