Lush mini-series give us MLK, Malcolm, Capote, more

Lately, some wise souls have said the “peak TV” era has ended..
They may be right, but you can’t prove it right now: Two lushly crafted mini-series are opening back-to-back.
And no, these aren’t on pay-extra channels. They will stream, but they’re mainly on basic-cable. They debut with two hours, then are weekly for six more; they are:
— “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans,” at 10 and 11:20 p.m. Wednesday (Jan. 31) on FX, then reaching Hulu on Thursday.
— “Genius: MLK/X” (shown here) at 9 and 10:15 p.m. Thursday (Feb. 1) on the National Geographic Channnel, reaching Disney+ on Friday. ABC simulcasts that first episode, before switching at 10:15 to a report on the men wrongly convicted of killing Malcolm X.
Certainly, these aren’t for everyone. There are many people, I’d suspect, who don’t care about higb society in 1970s New York and Truman Capote’s place in it.
But both are beautifully crafted period pieces, filled with compelling people.
“Feud” starts with Capote at his peak, an acclaimed author and talker who spews gossip and wit. He’s the perfect person to attend your dinner party or ease your heartache.
The society beauties – whom he calls “the swans” – love him … at first. Then, wallowing in writers’ block, he publishes a story with thinly disguised versions of them.
Tom Hollander gives us a compelling Capote, as have other actors, including Toby Jones, Robert Morse and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. He’s brash and broad and just this side of cartoon-ish – which makes him a lot like the real Capote.
But the pleasure here involves the women – their elegant appearance slightly masking sharp minds and quaking emotions. The cast – Naomi Watts, Diane Lane, Calista Flockhart, Chloe Sevigny – is extraordinary.
“Genius,” by comparison, skips big stars. Kevin Harrison Jr. and Aaron Pierre are fine, but it is the people they portray (Martin Luther King and Malcolm X) who compel us.
To the world, they were opposites – the clergyman and the convict, one mastering non-violence and the other scaring people.
Still, they were in the same tapestry. Ossie Davis, the actor, once talked about “the other brother”: If you don’t want to deal with King, there’s this other guy to face.
(The two only met once; that was re-enacted in the scene shown here.)
Both men molded the civil rights movement; both were killed at 39.
There are details here that rarely come up. King was named Michael until he was 5, when his dad changed both their names. As a boy, King attempted suicide; as a young man, he tried to escape his father’s shadow; he turned down being assistant pastor of his dad’s church, then settled for a church in Montgomery – where history found him.
Both men were slow to accept women’s equality. Coretta Scott King, a gifted opera singer, and Betty Shabazz, a teacher and nurse, were often shunted aside.
But in civil rights, King and Malcolm triumphed. It’s a great story, worth re-telling.