The Shards Review: FX & Ryan Murphy's Glossy Adaptation Loses The Novel's Bite

Published Aug 5, 2026, 11:00 AM EDT Graeme Guttmann is the Deputy News Editor for ScreenRant, overseeing the News and Interview & Events team for film and television. He began at ScreenRant in 2020 as a freelancer. He has interviewed talent from various films and series, including Jennifer Coolidge, Mikey Madison, Emma Roberts, and more. Additionally, Graeme is a critic for ScreenRant, having attended film festivals like Sundance, Toronto International Film Festival, SXSW, and Cannes. You can reach him at graeme.g@screenrant.com and read his criticism here: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/critics/graeme-guttmann/movies Ryan Murphy releases so many series it’s almost hard to keep track of. This calendar year alone, the prolific producer, writer, and director has given us three: comic book adaptation The Beauty, the under-baked but effective American Love Story, and now, The Shards, an adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel about a young man also named Bret Ellis in 1980s Los Angeles. The Shards is a compelling, albeit masturbatory book about a group of affluent, industry-adjacent high school seniors who spend their final semesters at Buckley Prep School snorting cocaine, cheating on each other, and introducing a potentially troubling new student into their friend group, all while a serial killer named the Trawler lingers in the background. Ellis reflects the lens of narcissism that often populates his work back on himself, threading the voices of past narrators like American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman through Bret’s internal monologue. It’s a high-wire act that makes for a filthy, pulpy, violent opus that is one of his best works. So, of course, Murphy had to get his hands on it. Before he did, Luca Guadagnino was tapped to oversee the adaptation at HBO, a compelling combination that fell apart. Sometime later, Murphy revived The Shards at FX, the home of his early hit Nip/Tuck and later genre fare like American Horror Story and American Crime Story. It’s not that Murphy isn’t equipped to handle The Shards; in fact, it makes sense that he and Guadagnino are two sides of the same coin that the television gods flipped when deciding who would handle this show. And while it’d be easy to lament Guadagnino’s vision (whatever that may have been), Murphy’s should be judged on its own merits. Depending on the project, Murphy takes on various roles, sometimes stepping back to let other writers or directors handle the day-to-day while he wears his producer hat. For The Shards, Murphy is significantly more involved; he directs the first episode and serves as co-writer on at least four of the first five episodes (the latter of which has Murphy’s fingerprints all over it with its grating Hairspray riff that overstays its welcome by about 45 minutes of the episode's 50-something minute runtime). All of this gives The Shards a sense of disequilibrium that undermines the potency of its story... But The Shards shows occasional flashes of brilliance. It’s impeccably produced and, though there are period elements, accuracy isn’t at front of mind. Here, the 80s are a feeling, the smell of cigarette smoke in a wood-paneled hamburger restaurant or the chlorine blue glow of a nighttime swim when the parents are gone for the weekend. Adults are rarely seen, save for Wes Bentley's predatory Terry Schafer and his drink-addled wife Liz (Evan Rachel Wood). Ultimately, and perhaps surprisingly, though, Murphy sanitizes Ellis's novel for the screen. Igby Rigney's Bret narrates the show with a flat affect, bored but convinced that everything he's saying is the most important thing someone has ever said. He talks about the serial killers that are popping up in and around LA, immediately establishing the threat of bone-chilling violence around every corner. This lingering horror is undermined by the teen drama at the show's core. Bret's core friend group consists of Susan Reynolds (Kaia Gerber, speaking flatly like Rigney but in a winking way that shows a savviness to the performance) and Thom Wright (Graham Campbell), the pair in a contentious relationship that seems on the brink of collapse; Debbie Schafer (Hayes Warner, in perfect coke-addled mean girl mode), Bret's girlfriend whom he constantly cheats on; and finally, Robert Mallory (Homer Gere), the new boy whose mysterious background piques Bret's interest. This interest leads to what should be an intense rivalry, but the dynamic rings hollow. It's a driving force of much of the novel's tension: is there something sinister hiding beneath Robert's facade, or is Bret just paranoid, attracted, or both? In this version of The Shards, it doesn't really matter. All the desire and violence tangled up between this quintet feels sterilized. Bret's relationships with classmates Matt Kellner (Owen Painter) and Ryan Vaughn (Daniel Dale) are practically glossed over, despite being a key part of Bret's story that also serves to feed into his paranoia about the ever-encroaching presence of the Trawler and Robert Mallory's invasion of his private life. Instead, The Shards injects teen tropes into the show, either in an effort to lengthen or otherwise flesh out the world it's depicting while sapping the central story of its potency. When The Shards does lean into horror, it feels out of place. When it leans into desire, there's a sheen of falsity to it, primarily because we know Bret would rather be sleeping with someone other than his girlfriend. All of this gives The Shards a sense of disequilibrium that undermines the power of its story, the razor-sharp fear and sexuality of Ellis's book dulled down by the blinding lights of Hollywood. The Shards premieres August 5, 2026, on FX, with new episodes released weekly. Release Date August 5, 2026 Network FX, Hulu Directors Max Minghella, Crystle Roberson Dorsey, Michael Uppendahl, Ryan Murphy Writers Juli Weiner, Charles Rogers, Bret Easton Ellis, Ryan Murphy, Lenore Zion Cast Kaia Gerber Susan Reynolds