Sex, drugs and serial killers: inside Ryan Murphy and Bret Easton Ellis’s lurid TV thriller
Why This Matters
Key context: <p>The Shards brings the cocaine-addled teens of a 1980s prep school to life with a cast of newcomers and a heavy dose of sleaze</p><p>One of the first things <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/ryan-murphy">Ryan Murphy</a>’s TV adaptation of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/breteastonellis">Bret Easton Ellis</a>’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jan/04/the-shards-by-bret-easton-ellis-review-a-triumphant-return-to-form">The Shards</a> will make you ask is: where the hell are these kids’ parents? The answer is simple. This is Los Angeles in 1981, and these fabulously benumbed kids aren’t being helicopter-parented. They’re going to parties, drinking whiskey, listening to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/jul/18/how-we-made-ultravox-vienna-midge-ure-billy-currie">Ultravox’s Vienna </a>on repeat and doing copious amounts of cocaine. It’s a complete vision of Ellis’s dully hedonistic America.</p><p>The FX series follows a character named Bret Ellis – a thinly-coded version of the author – in senior year at an exclusive Los Angeles prep school whose controlled, Joan Didion-coded world begins to unravel with the arrival of enigmatic transfer student Robert Mallory. At the same time, in the post-<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/charles-manson">Charles Manson</a> and Jeffrey Dahmer era, a serial killer known as The Trawler draws ever closer to Ellis and his increasingly paranoid circle of friends. Ellis (the real one) first released his autofictional story The Shards as a serialized podcast between 2020 and 2021 before expanding it into a novel in 2023.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/aug/04/the-shards-tv-show-thriller-cast-interview">Continue reading...</a> This development from The Guardian highlights ongoing changes in the sector.
The Shards brings the cocaine-addled teens of a 1980s prep school to life with a cast of newcomers and a heavy dose of sleazeOne of the first things Ryan Murphy’s TV adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s The Shards will make you ask is: where the hell are these kids’ parents? The answer is simple. This is Los Angeles in 1981, and these fabulously benumbed kids aren’t being helicopter-parented. They’re going to parties, drinking whiskey, listening to Ultravox’s Vienna on repeat and doing copious amounts of cocaine. It’s a complete vision of Ellis’s dully hedonistic America.The FX series follows a character named Bret Ellis – a thinly-coded version of the author – in senior year at an exclusive Los Angeles prep school whose controlled, Joan Didion-coded world begins to unravel with the arrival of enigmatic transfer student Robert Mallory. At the same time, in the post-Charles Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer era, a serial killer known as The Trawler draws ever closer to Ellis and his increasingly paranoid circle of friends. Ellis (the real one) first released his autofictional story The Shards as a serialized podcast between 2020 and 2021 before expanding it into a novel in 2023. Continue reading...
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