John Powers

Donald Glover's Emmy-winning FX series returns for its second season on Thursday. Critic John Powers says Atlanta is simultaneously "strange and angry and hysterically funny."

If you're a fan of thrillers, you know that they're defined by two extremes. At one end are the plot-driven worlds that work like clockwork machines (for instance, Murder on the Orient Express); at the other are the stories that sprawl outward to offer a portrait of the larger society (like James Ellroy's Los Angeles or Stieg Larsson's Sweden). As it turns out, I've recently come across an enjoyable example of each extreme.

The new season of the FX anthology series American Crime Story revisits the 1997 murder of the Italian designer. John Powers says the show presents a moving portrait of homophobia in 1990s America.