In 1997, a young gay serial killer named Andrew Cunanan shot Versace to death there as the designer, who was fifty, was returning from his morning stroll. A small bronze statue of a kneeling Aphrodite stood at the top of the mansion’s front steps. We were outside the Casa Casuarina, the Mediterranean-style mansion that the Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace renovated and considered his masterwork-a building with airy courtyards and a pool inlaid with dizzy ribbons of red, orange, and yellow ceramic tiles.
Murphy, referring to TV critics (including me) who have applied “camp” to his work, said, “I will admit that it really used to bug the shit out of me. People rarely use the term to describe a melodrama made by a straight man even when “camp” is meant as a compliment, it contains an insult, suggesting a musty smallness. To Murphy, “camp” describes not irony but something closer to clumsiness, the accident you can’t look away from.
Murphy prefers a different label: “baroque.” Between shots, the showrunner-who has overseen a dozen television series in the past two decades-elaborated, with regal authority, on this idea. “I think that he was, like, ‘It’s my tone-and my tone is unique.’ ” “I don’t think that when John Waters made ‘ Female Trouble’ that he was, like, ‘I want to make a camp piece,’ ” Murphy told me last May, as we sat in a production tent in South Beach, Florida, where he was directing the pilot of “American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace,” a nine-episode series for FX. Ryan Murphy hates the word “camp.” He sees it as a lazy catchall that gets thrown at gay artists in order to marginalize their ambitions, to frame their work as niche. (There was nothing like Transparent or Orange Is the New Black or Game of Thrones a few years ago, but who could imagine this list without them?) Our list is guaranteed to start plenty of loud arguments – but the beauty of TV is how it keeps giving us so much to argue about.This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from. You’ll find the groundbreaking creations of yesteryear as well as today’s innovators. On this list you’ll find vintage classics and new favorites, ambitious psychodramas and stoner comedies, underrated cult gems ripe for rediscovery, cops and cartoons and vampire slayers. The voters have spoken – and, damn, did they have some fierce opinions. The ratings didn’t matter – only quality. All shows from all eras were eligible anybody could vote for whatever they felt passionate about, from the black-and-white rabbit-ears years to the binge-watching peak-TV era. Legends like Carl Reiner and Garry Marshall, who sent us his ballot shortly before his death this summer. So we undertook a major poll – actors, writers, producers, critics, showrunners. What better moment to look back and celebrate the greatest shows in the history of the art form?
Ever since The Sopranos changed the game at the turn of the century, we’ve been in a gold rush that gives no signs of slowing down. There’s never been a creative boom for TV like the one we are living through right now.