American Horror Story: Apocalypse, episode 1 review: nukes, cannibalism, and Joan Collins – together at last

The liminal zone between hysteria and hysterical has been uproariously explored by Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story anthology across seven rollercoaster seasons. Series eight began in the gleeful high-camp tradition of its predecessors, the pot boiling over with gothic horror, swinging-for-the-fences satire and zinging put-downs delivered with aplomb by Joan Collins (as a crusty Hollywood grand dame). 

Apocalypse had been billed as a crossover between two of the most popular previous runs – the original 2011 Murder House (the franchise’s most conventionally spooky foray) and witch-tastic 2013 follow-up Coven. 

But in the first episode Murphy and co-creator Brad Falchuk (who also worked with Murphy on high school karaoke smash Glee!) focused on new characters. In a bonkers updating of a TV trope dating from the Cold War, nuclear annihilation was raining down on humanity with the only survivors the genetically-gifted and the mega-wealthy – each bundled off to bunkers operated by the murky Cooperative organisation. 

Very much in the second category was vacuous rich girl and would-be Instagram influencer Coco St Pierre Vanderbilt (Leslie Grossman). With missiles about to devastate Los Angeles – the nature of the conflict is never specified, only that the entire planet is shortly to be ravaged – she was guided to an underground facility presided over by the cackling duo of Wilhemina Venable (Murphy regular Sarah Paulson, reportedly playing three characters this season) and Miriam Mead (Kathy Bates). 

The baroque facility where they were marooned was outfitted like a Sisters of Mercy video with an unlimited budget and also home to, among others, gifted survivors Timmy (Kyle Allen) and Emily (Ash Santos), Coco’s assistant Mallory (Billy Lourd), the heiresss’s hairdresser Mr Gallant (Evan Peters) and Gallant’s viper-tongued grandmother Evie (Collins). 

Played with a straight face and the merest hint of a twinkle, Mrs Venable was a matriarch from the lower reaches of hell. She divided the survivors into elite “purples” and subservient “greys” and threatened their sanity by forcing them to listen to The Carpenters's Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft on infinite loop. 

And when Coco grumbled about the jellied vitamin supplements served for dinner, the solution was to bump off another survivor and present him as a broth (it’s hard to get past the suspicion that the entire episode was building up to the horrified quip “the stew is Stu!”).

Quite how it all tied in with Murder House and Coven was a question left hanging like a slab of meat in a slaughterhouse, though there was a clue with the pre-closing credits appearance of Cody Fern as grown-up version of Murder House demon child Michael Langdon. 

Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror is often credited with reviving the anthology milieu. However, there’s a case that Murphy and American Horror Story has been just as influential (the difference being that Black Mirror tells a different story each episode whereas AHS switches it up season-by-season). 

Murphy, who recently signed a lucrative deal wtih Netflix, may, moreover, look back on American Horror Story as his greatest triumph. Unlike the ultimately exhausting Glee! or American Crime Story– which swerved from an addictive re-telling of the OJ Simpson trial to a meandering meditation on the killing of Gianni Versace – it has since 2011 maintained a tonal consistency, retaining its maniacal gloss as it worked through the full gallery of horror cliches. 

Apocalypse, on the basis of its first hour, will stand shoulder to shoulder with its predecessors. This was a silly, ghastly soufflé that bounced between horrific and hilarious and was never less than completely exhilarating. 

American Horror Story: Apocalypse begins in the UK on Fox, September 27