One doesn’t have to be a true-crime buff to recall the murder cases at the center of two new drama series premiering this week, Hulu’s “Murdaugh: Death in the Family,” out Wednesday, and Peacock’s “Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy,” out Thursday.
Both limited series are based on notorious slayings that received reams of news coverage in their day, and later, covered ad nauseum by true-crime podcasters and in TV series. The Murdaugh murders in 2021 uncovered the stunning implosion of a prominent South Carolina family and legal dynasty, while John Wayne Gacy has gone down in history as one of America’s most prolific serial killers, responsible for the deaths of at least 33 young men and boys between 1972 and 1978.
So what else is there left to say about these cases? A lot, it turns out, as evidenced by these new engaging dramas premiering this week.
Spanning eight episodes each, both series explore the circumstances that gave rise to horrific crimes — from dynastic hubris, corruption and greed to societal prejudice and lazy law enforcement.
“Murdaugh: Death in the Family,” premiering with three episodes, follows Alex Murdaugh (played by Jason Clarke), who was convicted of the June 2021 killings of his wife Maggie (Patricia Arquette) and his youngest son, Paul (Johnny Berchtold).
Created by Michael D. Fuller and Erin Lee Carr, the series tracks the downward spiral of the Murdaughs, a family who held sway and power in their coastal community of Hampton, S.C. But decades of corruption and privilege gave rise to the monstrous actions of Alex, the fourth-generation attorney in the family law firm. He embezzled over $700,000 from the firm, stole millions of dollars in insurance payouts from needy clients, attempted to cover up a 2019 boating accident involving his son that resulted in the death of 19-year-old Mallory Beach, and concocted a bizarre murder-for-hire plot for a life insurance payout. Murdaugh was convicted in March 2023 of murdering his wife and son and is currently serving two consecutive life sentences. He was also sentenced to an additional 40 years in federal prison and 27 years in state prison for financial crimes.
Based on the “Murdaugh Murders Podcast” by Mandy Matney (portrayed in the series by Brittany Snow), Clarke and Arquette are a dynamic pair, portraying the dysfunction and denial that led to the tragic slayings.
Murdaugh is a sweaty, volatile mess, addicted to painkillers he hides in a chewing tobacco tin. His good-ol’-boy Southern-isms (“My daddy said, ‘Son, just cause you don’t wanna pay a bill don’t mean it ain’t due”) serve in covering up the simmering mess underneath the causal boating wear. The first episode of “Death in the Family” starts out a bit slow and lays the colloquialisms a little too thick, but it leads to a captivating story that sheds new light on an oft-trod story.
“Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy,” which drops in full, tackles the crimes of Gacy, a dangerous predator who hid behind the facade of an upstanding leader in his Chicago, Ill., suburb of Norwood Park Township. The charming and funny contractor was active in local politics, enjoyed painting and even did volunteer work entertaining sick kids — dressed as Pogo the clown.
But when a Des Plaines teen went missing, a search for him led to the discovery of multiple bodies buried in the crawl space under Gacy’s home in 1978.
The series explains how “The Clown Killer” got away with so many murders, for so long, while telling the story of the victims, their families and the investigators who cracked this haunting case. Gacy, then in his 30s, preyed predominantly upon populations that already operated in the dark: male sex workers, runaways and troubled youth, many of whom were homosexual. When they went missing, the police rarely investigated their disappearances.
Even when a living victim accused Gacy of kidnapping and rape, the district attorney refused to prosecute, brushing off the terrifying incident as “homosexual horseplay.” Never mind that Gacy had been accused of multiple sexual assaults on young men, and in 1968, he pleaded guilty to one count of sodomy of a 15-year-old boy. The series exposes the systemic failures and prejudice that allowed for Gacy’s reign of terror to go unchecked for nearly a decade. The stories of a few of his victims are told here, humanizing them beyond gory headlines and salacious true-crime fare.
Based on the 2021 Peacock docuseries of the same name, the series stars a menacing Michael Chernus (“Severance”) as Gacy. Gabriel Luna (“The Last of Us”) plays Det. Rafael Tovar, a tireless investigator who worked round-the-clock to identify bodies found in Gacy’s home.
“Devil in Disguise” also unpacks the details of the twice-married Gacy before his killing spree, and all the troubling signs were there, even if everyone around him chose to look the other way. Gacy was sentenced to death in 1980, and was executed at Stateville Correctional Center in 1994.
The series’ pacing is uneven in spots and its messaging about media and law enforcement’s bias against the lifestyles of Gacy’s victims can feel a bit repetitive, but overall it tells a compelling story about one of the darkest chapters in America’s crime archives.
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