‘Impeachment: American Crime Story’ shows there are limits to how much we can (or should) rehab ’90s tabloid figures

As in “The People v. O.J. Simpson,” the tone is somewhere between tenderly empathetic and winkingly dishy, highlighting the injustices of the case, as well as the tabloid-friendly details that made the scandal such a headline-generator in the first place. Burgess smartly borrows from Toobin’s book its zoomed-out lens on the many right-wing figures who endeavored toward a curtailed Clinton presidency. Paula’s sexual harassment case gains visibility through her camera-loving activist lawyer, Susan Carpenter-McMillan (a perfect Judith Light), a predator like Linda who hunts in the guise of a confidant. There are Republican players like Ann Coulter (a too-mannered Cobie Smulders); her then-boyfriend George Conway (George Salazar); Matt Drudge (a fun Billy Eichner); and Linda’s literary agent, Lucianne Goldberg (Margo Martindale), who comes up with the idea for taping Monica’s calls. And of course there’s Ken Starr (Dan Bakkedahl), whose investigative team, which calls future Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh a member, had spent four years flailing about in search of a justification to impeach Clinton before learning about L’Affaire Lewinsky.