FX’s ‘American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez’ Is a Familiar Tragedy Enhanced by a Transformative Lead Performance: TV Review

The limited series “American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez” is the first of six series from executive producer Ryan Murphy to air this month, and the third Murphy project to center on elite athletes mired in tabloid scandal. “American Sports Story” — don’t you dare make it an acronym! — joins “American Horror Stories” as well as “American Crime Story” in riffing on the anthology format Murphy helped popularize. The first season of the latter show centered on O.J. Simpson, while the upcoming installment of “Monsters” on Netflix will focus on the Menendez brothers, including teen tennis star Erik.

Based on the reported podcast from the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team and production company Wondery, “American Sports Story” can feel circumscribed by all these predecessors and precedents. Created by Stuart Zicherman (“The Americans,” “The Affair”), the 10-episode season sometimes struggles to put its own stamp on a highly publicized story that hews closely to longstanding Murphy-verse themes. But the troubled life and tragic downfall of the New England Patriots tight end, who was convicted of murder in 2015 before taking his own life in prison two years later, requires little embellishment to serve as a parable for the dangers of societal homophobia, a lack of support systems and the reckless endangerment of the football industrial complex. And as Hernandez himself, actor Josh Rivera — a musical theater performer by training who previously starred in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” and the national touring company of “Hamilton” — utterly transforms into a player who was quick on his feet, but couldn’t outrun his own demons.

“American Sports Story” is a straightforward retelling. Apart from opening with Hernandez’s shooting of his associate Alexander Bradley (Roland Buck III), months before the killing of his future brother-in-law Odin Lloyd (J. Alex Brinson) that would actually put Hernandez behind bars, the episodes progress in linear fashion through a sadly brief biography. Hernandez grew up in working class Bristol, Connecticut, alternately encouraged and abused by his mercurial father Dennis (Vincent Laresca), who raised Aaron and his older brother DJ (Ean Castellanos) to have the football career he squandered with a police run-in that ended his college career. Hernandez was doomed to repeat his father’s mistakes at a far grander scale, after successful stints at the University of Florida and the Patriots left him insulated from consequences until it was too late, both for himself and his victims.

The series bears certain hallmarks of a Murphy production, such as foregrounding Hernandez’s queerness and employing longtime collaborators like directors Paris Barclay and “Pose” creator Steven Canals. Yet it eschews the camp, outrageous tone that marks the mogul’s signature. With its baby Kardashians and media frenzy, “The People v. O.J. Simpson” made space for humor alongside serious subjects like racism and domestic violence. In its debut outing, “American Sports Story” is far more grim, effectively instilling a mounting sense of dread as Hernandez misses chance after chance to turn his life around. The sole source of levity is a growling Bill Belichick impression courtesy of Rivera’s fellow stage veteran Norbert Leo Butz, a Bon Jovi-blasting caricature of winning prioritized over all else, including players’ welfare.

Rivera lets just enough sensitivity shine through to convey Hernandez’s charm and potential. Though coaches and scouts look askance at his many tattoos, Rivera-as-Hernandez has a megawatt smile and sweet vulnerability that convinces the audience things could have turned out differently. If only Dennis hadn’t died suddenly when Hernandez was a teenager. If only Florida coach Urban Meyer (Tony Yazbeck) hadn’t protected him from legal troubles, then pushed him into the pros before he was mature enough to handle the spotlight. If only Hernandez hadn’t been drafted by the Patriots, putting him back in the orbit of bad influences from home that encouraged his temper and drug use.

Both the steps of Hernandez’s downward spiral and the larger issues it brings up within sports are well known. Though his crimes were extreme, Hernandez was far from the only footballer to suffer from CTE, the brain injury that likely impeded his decision-making and enhanced his behavioral issues. Nor was he the only player of color from a lower-income background to expose himself to CTE in the name of protecting white quarterbacks like his college teammate Tim Tebow (Patrick Schwarzenegger).

As gripping at it is, while watching “American Sports Story,” such familiarity makes one wonder about its intended audience. For sports fans, the Hernandez scandal played out just over a decade ago, well within living memory. Perhaps the show functions more as a crash course for Murphy’s core audience — the viewers more familiar with Rivera, Butz and Yazbeck’s stage work than the art of a great offense. Though if that’s the goal, the producer might have been better off Trojan Horse-ing the saga into “American Crime Story.” (Thirteen years after the debut of “American Horror Story,” the franchise has never been bigger or more interchangeable.)

Where “American Sports Story” takes the chance to use its artistic license is in Hernandez’s private relationships, particularly with other men. A rare composite character, Chris (Jake Cannavale, son of “The Watcher” star Bobby), is a physical therapist at Hernandez’s agency who becomes a rare romantic, not just sexual, interest. In scripting the final moments of Odin Lloyd, a senseless killing with no rhyme or reason in Hernandez’s deteriorated mental state, the writers emphasize the player’s paranoia that anyone might find out about his strictly guarded sexuality. These scenes don’t necessarily cast Hernandez in a new light, but they do emphasize the plight of a man who never reconciled his identity and his livelihood. “American Sports Story” is not a radical reinvention, either of its subject or the Murphy oeuvre. Instead, it’s a dramatized crash course in what athletic ability can and can’t transcend.

The first two episodes of “American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez” will premiere on FX on Sep. 17 at 10 p.m. E.T., then stream on Hulu the next day. Remaining episodes will air weekly on Tuesdays and stream on Wednesdays.