The final episode of American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez, the first season of a new inspired-by-true-events anthology series created by Stuart Zicherman, bears the title “Who Killed Aaron Hernandez?” In some ways, it could double as the name of the show. Created under the same banner as the Ryan Murphy-produced American Horror Story and American Crime Story, American Sports Story does not suggest, as others have, that the convicted murderer and former New England Patriots tight end did not die by his own hand in prison. But, without absolving Hernandez of any guilt, the 10-episode series doubles as an inventory of the many factors and people in Hernandez’s life that did little to impede his journey to that fate. 

Based on the podcast Gladiator: Aaron Hernandez and Football Inc., a co-production of Wondery and The Boston Globe, the series immediately establishes Hernandez (Josh Rivera) as a character tortured by unresolvable conflicts. The opening scene depicts a paranoid Hernandez leaving a Florida club, driving to a remote location, and shooting his companion, Alexander Sherrod (Roland Buck III), in the head. In the next, Hernandez accepts the Pop Warner Inspiration to Youth Award with a winning smile and tremendous modesty. Can a beloved sports star also be unhinged and homicidal when out of the spotlight?

That’s only the simplest question raised by American Sports Story, which, one chilling flashback aside, begins Hernandez’s story with a depiction of his teen years as the son of Dennis (Vincent Laresca), a demanding and abusive former college football player with a criminal past, and Terri (Tammy Blanchard), whose numerous conspicuous flaws include a tendency to put her own desires over the safety and well-being of Aaron and his brother DJ (Ean Castellanos). Aaron and DJ show talent, but it’s Aaron who clearly has the greater potential — potential that, while still reeling from his father’s unexpected death, will bring him to the esteemed University of Florida football team led by Coach Urban Meyer (Tony Yazbeck), portrayed here as one of many figures who may care about Aaron to one degree or another, but only as long as he helps them fulfill their own needs.

8.5

American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez

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• The strong performances and complex depiction of a high-profile story

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• This series rolls out weekly and should be consumed that way. It’s too dark and sad to binge.

Beyond neglect, Aaron deals with a blossoming chemical dependency, as other drugs join the mix alongside the weed and alcohol he’s used for years, and his own sexuality. College means leaving behind a longstanding high school relationship with a classmate and finding ways to live in the closet while in the public spotlight. Further complicating matters: years of blows to the head, the full toll of which would not be known until after Aaron’s death, when a posthumous study indicated that the 27-year-old had suffered profound damage that would soon likely have debilitated him had he lived.

Though Aaron Hernandez’s story easily lends itself to a lurid treatment, American Sports Story never takes that route in telling it. It’s unavoidably filled with sex and violence, but Zicherman, his writing staff, and an ace lineup of directors that includes Carl Franklin and Paris Barclay avoid any exploitative impulses, bringing nuance to every chapter of the story. An episode dealing in part with Aaron’s relationship with Tim Tebow (Patrick Schwarzenegger), his teammate both as a Gator and a Patriot, exemplifies this. Depicted as both well meaning and blinkered in his view of the world, Tebow offers evangelical guidance that helps curb Aaron’s destructive impulses for a time, but also deepens the self-loathing stirred by his attraction to men.

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Hernandez makes bad choices, choices that grow more awful as the series progresses. He is also alternately abused, ignored, and let off the hook too easily. An ugly bar fight shortly after his arrival in Florida, for instance, leads to the intervention of a legal fixer. It’s part of a system made to prop up Meyer’s program at all costs, whatever the toll, a system writ large in the NFL, where the stakes are even higher and the players’ short-term performance is emphasized over any long-term consequences. Of those close to Hernandez, his agent Brian Murphy (Thomas Sadoski) seems most concerned with Aaron’s best interests, but even he’s on the payroll.

Rivera’s performance locks into the series’ difficult balancing act from the start. The series depicts Hernandez as both victim and villain, but Rivera plays him as someone who saw himself as neither. Rivera lets the anger and paranoia that drove Hernandez to kill live alongside his vulnerability. The performance doesn’t exactly make Hernandez sympathetic, but it does foreground his humanity and captures the way a star who had the world handed to him could also be a kid who never had a chance. The series offers a portrait of a man haunted by contradictions always threatening to destroy him. In the end, they define him.

Premieres: Two episodes premiere on Wednesday, Sept. 17 at 10/9c on FX, with subsequent episodes airing weekly
Who’s in it: Josh Rivera, Tony Yazbeck, Tammy Blanchard, Patrick Scwarzenegger
Who’s behind it: Stuart Zicherman
For fans of: Those interested in true crime who want to get beyond the lurid details
How many episodes we watched: 10 of 10