‘Versace’ can chaff like a cheap suit

The twisted, true story of Andrew Cunanan’s 1997 killing spree exists in whatever dark sliver of cultural space remains between lurid and sordid. It dangles just out of satisfying reach, even with all the fresh attention being lavished upon it by Ryan Murphy and company in FX’s watchable yet incrementally disappointing “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story.”

A stylish but depressing nine-episode tragedy (which premiered Jan. 17), the series heralds, of course, the much-awaited return of the true-crime anthology that launched two years ago with a marvelously textured retelling of O.J. Simpson’s murder trial.

This time the series (eight episodes of which were made available for review) takes a big swerve into a dead-end story that is far less compelling. Fascinating yet repellent, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” demonstrates why some celebrity-related crimes acquire lasting notoriety and others just fade away.

The brilliance of “The People v. O.J. Simpson” was how it made a widely famous and well-raked case seem entirely new. The failure of “Versace” is that it takes a case that is at best vaguely remembered (mostly by fashionistas and gay men) and tries to apply to it the same degree of resonance and insight.

Alas, the themes that so easily presented themselves for fresh scrutiny in “People vs. O.J.” (systemic racism and sexism, media manipulation, elusive justice) are far from evident in “The Assassination of Gianni Versace”: Is it about beauty? Is it about psychosis? Is it about gay rights?

Yes to all that, but never effectively.

It’s far from a total bust, however. As with “People v. O.J.,” the series has that intoxicating mix of reported fact (drawing on Vanity Fair journalist Maureen Orth’s 1999 book “Vulgar Favors” for details) and a dash of invention that now defines the “American Crime Story” style.

“Glee” star Darren Criss is plenty creepy and believable as Cunanan, a 27-year-old charlatan and chronic fibber who mooches off the kindness of strangers. Criss capably holds the series together when the writing and dialogue can’t, particularly in how he portrays the smarmy banality of Cunanan’s evil. Sometimes he’s a charming creep. Sometimes he’s a violent creep. It works like a light switch, and it does get predictable; as such, the scary legend of Cunanan might have better lent itself to a serial-killer season of Murphy’s “American Horror Story.”

In the first episode, Cunanan arrives in Miami in July 1997 and wastes no time locating his ultimate target, the Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace (?dgar Ram?rez), who lives in an ornate South Beach mansion. Versace takes a morning stroll to a nearby newsstand to buy a stack of magazines; when he returns to his front gate, Cunanan walks up and shoots him a few times, including a bullet through his face. As the murderer flees, Versace’s longtime companion, Antonio D’Amico (Ricky Martin, crying sufficient soap-opera tears) cradles a dying Versace in his arms.

By night’s end, Versace’s formidable younger sister, the brutally blond Donatella (Pen?lope Cruz, savoring each snarl) arrives and immediately takes charge of her brother’s empire. Cunanan has fled; Miami police soon learn that the FBI has been pursuing the suspect for weeks, tying him to four other killings.

The episode flashes back and surfs along the quasi-true world of its killer. Among the many falsehoods Cunanan regaled his friends and acquaintances with is the claim of a dalliance with Versace, circa 1990 in San Francisco. True, or not true, or sort of true? If you need to know definitively, with “Law and Order”-like objectivity, then “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” will be tough going. If, on the other hand, you’re tantalized by the fantasies Cunanan created for himself, then carry on.

For sensation’s sake, obviously, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” has started at what should be its penultimate chapter, with a handsome gunman on the loose and an exquisitely — if grotesquely — displayed corpse in the morgue. Anyone with a search engine (or a good memory) knows that Cunanan never went to trial; he took his own life once the police caught up to him a week later.

In a serious miscalculation of structure and coherence, each episode of “Versace” stutters and skips along a chronology that moves mainly backward, further into Cunanan’s deceits in the 1990s and late ’80s, until it finally arrives (in the eighth episode) at his spoiled yet abusive childhood, marred by his Filipino crook of a father (Jon Jon Briones). Along this same disordered timeline, the show wanly offers a story about Gianni and Donatella’s struggle to keep the House of Versace in the black.

Thus, the Cunanan sequences play like reheated “Dateline” episodes while the Versace scenes are like paging through a stack of old Vogues. Ram?rez brings a dour elegance to Versace’s creativity and moods — and one episode somewhat opaquely references Orth’s reporting that Versace was HIV positive, which was supposedly kept private to protect the business.

As you may have already heard, an outraged Donatella Versace and her family have lashed out at Murphy and FX, calling “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” an unauthorized work of fiction and gossip. For what it’s worth, the Versaces come off sympathetically in the series, which is a surprise; Maya Rudolph’s impression of Donatella years ago on “Saturday Night Live” was probably more damaging than this.

Rather than exploit too many of Donatella’s glycerin tears, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace” is best (and most disturbing) when it chronicles the dismal fates of Cunanan’s other victims — quiet, nonfamous men who made the terrible mistake of crossing paths with a dangerous liar.