FX’s television adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s The Shards, co-created with Ryan Murphy, is a chilling, sleek, and profoundly uncomfortable exploration of innocence lost. Set in the sun-drenched, air-conditioned vacuum of 1981 Los Angeles, the series follows a fictionalized 17-year-old Bret (Igby Rigney) and his inner circle of uber-wealthy prep school seniors as a sadistic serial killer known as “The Trawler” wreaks havoc.
The Shards uses terror to dismantle the delusion of teenage invincibility—offering a striking, unintended mirror to today’s cultural landscape.
In The Shards, innocence isn’t lost through a sudden tragedy; it is slowly corrupted by apathy, privilege, and paranoia. Bret and his friends—a group of detached teenagers driving luxury cars and navigating adult-level freedom—already exist in a state of manufactured maturity. Yet, their sophistication is a facade.
When the threat of violence creeps into their pristine suburban enclave, their wealth and posture fail to protect them. The loss of innocence in The Shards happens at the exact moment Bret realises the adult world offers no real safety. The parents in the series are absent leaving the teens to navigate a predatory threat alone. Innocence dissolves not just because of the body count, but because these young people are forced to confront the dark reality that their immunity was an illusion all along.
The Verdict
The Shards succeeds because it refuses to offer easy comfort. It captures the exact frequency of teenage vulnerability—the agonizing transition from feeling entirely invincible to realising how fragile your world actually is. It is a stylish, disturbing look back at 1981 that feels uncomfortably at home in the atmosphere of today.
You can stream and watch new episodes of The Shards on Disney+ every Thursday at 11:00 AM AEST.
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