IF THERE IS a more obvious but belated pairing on the screen, it’s TV producer Ryan Murphy and American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis. Perhaps you might not think they’d make good creative partners, but both men share a love of high drama, maximalism and the lurid lives of the rich.

They each understand the allure of shiny, beautiful bodies and the power of a stuffed wallet. So it makes sense, then, that Murphy (and his large team) has produced a streaming series of Easton Ellis’s 2023 novel The Shards, for Disney+.

The series is a mix of genres: a creepy slasher-meets teen drama-meets psychosexual exploration of young manhood. The book began as a serialised audiobook by Easton Ellis, loosely based on his own youth, with an added serial killer angle. 

LA teens

Igby Rigney as Bret, Kaia Gerber as Susan Reynolds

At the story’s centre is the metafictional character of Bret (played by Igby Rigney), a preening wannabe writer living in a moneyed milieu in Los Angeles. It’s 1981, and Bret and his close friends (who all attend a fancy prep school) are living a largely parentless lifestyle despite being barely 18. They spend their free time cruising down LA’s coastal highways, shopping in record stores or taking cocaine at parties. 

Murphy’s slick, stylised approach to visuals is at its peak in The Shards, where lingering shots of beautiful faces and wide-angle approaches to notable Hollywood buildings help to create a world that’s enticing and dripping with wealth. But visually the show also indicates that there’s a darkness beneath it all, a yuckiness that’s barely being concealed.

Bret and his crew are beautiful, and look and act far older than their years. There’s Bret’s bleach-blonde, ultra-rich girlfriend Debbie Schaffer (Hayes Warner); and the It-couple of handsome, curly-haired Thom Wright (Graham Campbell) and his statuesque girlfriend, popular student Susan Reynolds (Kaia Jordan Gerber). Into their world appears Robert Mallory (Homer Gere), another beautiful person who the closeted Bret first clocks at an early screening of The Shining. The film eerily echoes the opening scene to The Shining in its own opening section, as Bret drives towards the cinema where he and Robert will fatefully cross paths.

Bret is instantly suspicious of Robert, who slides easily into school life but trails with him an aura of mystery. The viewer knows that Bret is attracted to Robert, but isn’t willing to admit that the attraction is turning into a noxious jealousy. As the series progresses, Robert acts as a mirror to Bret’s own desires. Like Bret, Robert is secretly obsessed with Susan, though his fantasies are sexual. Bret is left destabilised by Robert’s very presence, and the possibility of what his actions might do to his and Susan’s world. 

And added to all of this, Bret suspects Robert is up to something bad: that he’s a serial killer.

This is the eerie part of The Shards, a parallel murder mystery that sees a mysterious man nicknamed the Trawler kidnapping and killing young people in Bret and his pals’ community. The series harnesses the dark suspense hanging over Bret’s odd world and turns it into a creeping horror about what this serial killer is capable of. Bret quickly turns his suspicions on Robert, believing he is the Trawler.

Celebrity gloss

Kaia Gerber as Susan, Reynolds, Igby Rigney as Bret, Hayes Warner as Debbie, Schaffer, Homer Gere as Robert Mallory, Graham Campbell as Thom Wright.

The cast of The Shards are an intriguing bunch. Murphy is always good at bringing real-life celebrity into his shows (one of the Murphy stable’s most recent – and panned – shows, All’s Fair, starred Kim Kardashian), and here he leans full-on into nepo baby culture.

Kaia Gerber is the daughter of 90s supermodel Cindy Crawford, and handily for her is the absolute spit of her mother. Yet she’s the weakest member of the cast, and only serves to reveal the cracks in the sometimes hokey dialogue. Though in her defence, she at least brings an appealing warmth to her wafer-thin character of Susan. 

Homer Gere is – you guessed it – the son of Richard Gere. He’s given a prominent role despite his own lack of other lead roles, but having these big Hollywood family names in the cast helps to make the series feel even more rich in wealth and connections. And need we mention that Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford were themselves once a couple? Even Easton Ellis couldn’t write that coincidence into the text.

Yet Gere doesn’t really play Robert Mallory as dark or even compelling enough to feel like a potential murderer. There’s a particular menacing depth that’s missing.

Rigney, however, is well cast as the diminutive yet charming Bret. Thankfully, as he’s leading the whole thing. This is his first series lead role, and he’s enjoyable to watch, thanks to his laconic line delivery and preppy appearance. Bret’s complicated relationship with his sexuality means he’s adept at keeping secrets; his novelist side means he’s constantly seeking the true story beneath what he’s presented with.

Heightened drama

Kaia Gerber as Susan Reynolds, Homer Gere as Robert Mallory.

The Shards is narrated by Bret from the vantage point of the future, his words sometimes laden with regret and aloof weariness. As a narrative device, this means that we can take that his memories are recalled with the precision and flair of a novelist. He’s not aiming so much for the truth as to share with us his depiction of the truth.

There is plenty of subtext to unpack throughout, about the impact of Aids on LA’s gay community, of Bret’s sexuality being revealed, of the possibility that the hedonistic excess that he and his friends enjoy will eventually turn them into the unhappy, unhinged people who their own parents have turned into.

The Shards is a moreish watch, though from the third episode things start to shift on the rails. As the serial killer becomes more prominent in the story, the tone of the series wobbles. 

Some of its nine episodes are elongated by too-long sex scenes or masturbation scenes, slow-motion party scenes, or Bret’s meandering into LA’s history of cults and serial killers. The latter do serve to heighten the drama, and show Bret’s own interest in his city’s dark side (as well as his writerly aims), but there is the feeling sometimes that the story is being dragged out – even if the dragging is slickly done.

Yet because Murphy and team are so skilled at dressing their work in the most beautiful way possible, each episode goes down nicely. You might find parts of the series implausible, yet keep watching, hypnotised by its stunning sheen.

Crammed full of 1980s needledrops (Ultravox, Fleetwood Mac), The Shards is a spirited, glossy and enticing slice of dark beauty. Is it realistic? Not in the slightest. Does it always make sense? Not quite. But does it play into its archness in a way that’s ultimately quite seductive? Mostly.

The Shards is streaming on Disney+ now.