Back in 2017, when Ryan Murphy all but reigned supreme over cable, the television auteur brought Feud: Bette and Joan to our screens. A campy, cutting and colorful take on one of Hollywood’s most infamous rivalries, it featured standout performances from Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon as Golden Age greats Joan Crawford and Bette Davis.

With a near-infinite basis as an anthology series, Feud felt like a show Murphy would rinse, lather, and repeat a la American Horror Story or American Crime Story. Instead, though, the series took a five year hiatus, the second season shifted focus from the infamous (and too often portrayed) feud between Prince Charles and Princess Diana to that between Truman Capote and the socialites he worshiped, and Murphy moved from a writing and directing capacity to a solely producorial one. Now, so many changes later, Feud: Capote vs. The Swans is premiering, but the show leaves something to be desired.

Feud: Capote vs. The Swans follows the fallout of Capote’s unfinished but oft-discussed novel Answered Prayers, a story of excess and eccentricity in New York society that plastered the personal business of many of the city’s biggest names across the gossip columns. As a premise for Feud, it’s fantastic. In practice, the show fizzles across its eight episodes. Things kick off in the first episode, when Truman (Tom Hollander) sends a chapter to be published in Esquire magazine as a proof of concept (he’s horribly behind on his deadline and risks owing his publishers hundreds of thousands). That chapter, “La Cote Basque” (named for a restaurant on West........

© Observer