In TV's seasonal rush of Spooks, Downton etc, we must also hail the sterling (if gruesome) work going on at the FX channel. Alongside series two of The Walking Dead, they've thrown in the additional delights of gory French cop thriller Braquo and, last night, we saw the debut of the weird and scary American Horror Story.
You'll like Braquo if you were enamoured of stuff like Training Day or The Shield, while it's less multilayered but even more visceral than Spiral (or Engrenages), its stable mate at French network Canal+. It's about a thuggish squad of Paris-based detectives who live in their own private universe of violence, vengeance and self-defence against a ferocious jungle of crime, as well as a self-serving police hierarchy which only impedes their valuable crime-busting work. They even have their own all-hours bar at their shabby HQ. Directed by ex-cop Olivier Marchal, Braquo started with chief 'tec Max blinding a suspect with a pen and then committing suicide, while beatings, intimidation and shooting prisoners is all part of the team's routine. Kinda crazy actually, but it delivers what the French would call a frisson.
American Horror Story comes, amazingly, from Glee's creator Ryan Murphy, but rather than regional dance competitions it's about ghosts, guilt, sex, psychosis and primal fear. Shrink Dr Ben Harmon (Dylan McDermott, pictured right), wife Vivien (Connie Britton) and daughter Violet (Taissa Farmiga) have moved from Boston to a spooky old house in LA. It was cheap and looked like a bargain, but it was the scene of a murder-suicide and countless other nameless horrors. The Harmons are trying to patch up their teetering marriage after Ben's affair with a student and Vivien's miscarriage, but it seems their psychic traumas only serve to bring out the evil inherent in their new home, where events occur in several time zones simultaneously. Jessica Lange plays Constance, the sinister Southern Belle from next door, while the Harmons have inherited a housekeeper who looks like an elderly crone to most people, but to Ben she appears as a young hooker in bordello-style underwear. Mark my words, there's trouble ahead.
- Braquo: 10pm Sundays on FX
- American Horror Story: 10pm Mondays on FX
- The Walking Dead: 10pm Fridays on FX
Watch a behind-the-scenes video from American Horror Story