Monster: The Ed Gein Story

Monster: The Ed Gein Story is the third installment of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan's hit Netflix true-crime anthology, following the Jeffrey Dahmer and Menendez brothers seasons. This time Ian Brennan takes sole writing duties for an eight-episode portrait of Ed Gein, the Wisconsin 'Butcher of Plainfield' whose grave-robbing and murders in the 1950s seeped into the DNA of American horror.

Charlie Hunnam stars as the soft-spoken, deeply disturbed Gein, a recluse bound to his domineering mother Augusta (Laurie Metcalf) on an isolated farm. Rather than a straightforward biography, the season fans out into the culture Gein inspired, with Tom Hollander appearing as Alfred Hitchcock and the narrative threading in the films he influenced, from Psycho to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre to The Silence of the Lambs. Suzanna Son and Vicky Krieps round out a cast used to interrogate America's long fascination with real-life monsters.

Reviews were sharply negative, with critics faulting the season for gratuitous gore, a scattered structure and liberties taken with the facts, and it landed among the worst-reviewed entries in the franchise. Yet it was an enormous streaming draw, and Hunnam's committed, unsettling performance still earned him Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG Award nominations. Love it or loathe it, it was one of the most-discussed shows of the autumn. It streams on Netflix.