The People v OJ Simpson: first 'watercooler show' of 2016

One of the US's most gripping real-life legal dramas is the subject of a new series to air in the UK this month and critics are raving about it.

The People v OJ Simpson, a ten-part FX series, is based on New York writer Jeffrey Toobin's 1996 book The Run of His Life: The People v OJ Simpson and follows the American football player's 1994-5 murder trial. It forms the first season of American Crime Story, a new anthology from Ryan Murphy, the creator of American Horror Story, Glee and Scream Queens.

Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr stars as Simpson while David Schwimmer is his friend and lawyer Robert Kardashian. John Travolta and Sarah Poulson also have leading roles.

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The details of the case are on public record, but for those who didn't follow the case closely - or if you weren't born when it happened - there are spoilers to follow.

Orenthal James "OJ" Simpson was a retired athletics star and American footballer. In 1994, he was accused of the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman, a waiter who was reportedly at Nicole's LA home to return a pair of sunglasses she had left in his restaurant. The televised police chase before Simpson's arrest was shown live on TV and gripped the nation.

The trial took place at a time of heightened racial tensions in Los Angeles, coming a few years after the 1991 beating of Rodney King, and those issues would prove pivotal to the proceedings and how they were reported. Simpson was eventually acquitted in October 1995.[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"content_original","fid":"90440","attributes":{"class":"media-image"}}]]

The People v OJ Simpson: American Crime aired this week on FX in the US and critics were impressed.

It is "this year's most new addictive show", says Emma Dibdin on Digital Spy. Episode one begins two years prior to the murders to establish a backdrop of racial unrest, providing a crucial prelude to understanding the strange and racially polarised reaction to Simpson's arrest.

Once the context is established, says Dibdin, the show zips through the immediate aftermath of the murders, introduces the legal teams and explores the "mind-boggling process by which the case went from an open-and-shut guilty verdict to an acquittal".

This is a "lurid, gripping slice of impeccably pitched tabloid storytelling" and "the first new watercooler show of the year", she concludes.

Director Murphy, working from a script by screenwriting team Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, exercises uncharacteristic restraint, says Jonathan Bernstein in the Daily Telegraph. This is "timely, expertly executed, smartly cast entertainment", he continues, and if it has done its job correctly, it "will leave you with an unpleasant taste in your mouth".

The show acquits itself well, agrees James Poniewozik of the New York Times. Despite the well-chewed subject matter and the knowledge Simpson will be found not guilty, it is "absorbing, infuriating and, yes, thoroughly entertaining".

In Variety, Bran Lowry points out that the American Crime Story series, in the same way as its cousin, American Horror Story, is "designed to live on, documenting different tales in future cycles". Still, he notes, "like some of the football star's greatest gridiron moments, this is one of those perfectly timed runs that should be hard to replicate".

The People v OJ Simpson will be on BBC2 later this month, date and time to be announced.