How art impacts on life: OJ trial returns

The first episode in the 10-part The People v. OJ Simpson: American Crime Story premiered on FX, offering a dramatised behind-the-scenes look at how America’s football hero was charged, but acquitted, with murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ronald Goldman.

It stars the white female prosecutor convinced of his guilt and Simpson’s so-called Dream Team of lawyers that ultimately persuaded the predominantly black jury of reasonable doubt in the 1995 trial.

With glowing reviews, the show is a guaranteed hit at a time when Americans are again debating race and the criminal justice system. There was HBO’s award-winning The Jinx, which apparently trapped a New York real estate scion into confessing to murder, Netflix hit Making a Murderer, which moved the White House to explain its inability to intervene, and Serial, a humble radio podcast that reopened the case of a man convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend.

In the offing is The Jury, a drama picked for pilot by ABC, which follows a murder trial through the eyes of individual jurors, exploring the biases and experiences that influence their judgment.

But the Simpson trial was the biggest of all, combining celebrity, narcissism, murder, race, cutthroat lawyers and wall-to-wall TV coverage for one of the biggest reality spectacles of all time.

“You can trace the interest in American crime drama probably back to the OJ Simpson trial,” said Larry Cunningham, a law professor at St John’s University in New York.

The current debate about police tactics and how minorities – particularly black men – and the poor are treated by the criminal justice system has fanned appetite for such shows, experts say.

The serialisations delve into what makes a murderer, the investigation and the proceedings that can either acquit or convict a defendant.

“There’s a real urge to understand what really happened and how this went down. If he did do it, how could you find him innocent?” says Cuba Gooding Jr, who plays Simpson in the FX drama.

The cable network will be hoping for a hit as big as Making a Murderer – the 10-part documentary released on Netflix in December.

Filmed over 10 years, it is a real-life thriller following a man, Steven Avery, who was cleared by DNA of being wrongfully jailed 18 years for rape, only to become implicated in a murder.

It became the binge-watching fad for the liberal literati, sparked the pique of reality star Kim Kardashian – whose father is played by David Schwimmer in The People v OJ Simpson – and even elicited a White House statement about why it was unable to pardon Avery and his nephew, Brendan Dassey.

“I’m not surprised that we’re seeing a lot of these docu-series now,” said Robert Thompson, a professor of television at Syracuse University.

“Crime is automatically exciting, and then the investigation of it is interesting.

“It’s got mystery, it’s got adventure.”