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28 years after Lyle and Erik Menéndez were sentenced to life in prison for murdering their parents, Kitty and José, Netflix is revisiting their case with the new drama Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.

From the mind of Ryan Murphy, the new Netflix series will take viewers through the notorious American murders with a star-studded cast including Chloe Sevigny, Javier Bardem, Ari Graynor, Dallas Roberts, and Nathan Lane. Lyle will be played by Hollywood newcomer Nicolas Alexander Chavez, while Cooper Koch will take on the role of Erik.

Sevigny and Bardem play the role of Kitty and José, respectively.

The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story is the second instalment in Murphy’s controversial Monsters saga. In 2022, he revisited the exploits of the “Milwaukee Cannibal” in Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. The series was a tremendous hit, reaching 1 billion hours of views in its first 60 days and prompting widespread debate about the glamorisation of murderers.

In the new drama, Murphy will widen the scope of the case to include the harrowing sexual abuse Lyle and Erik alleged to have been perpetrated by their father.

Lyle and Erik were arrested for first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder outside their home in March of 1990. They were then sentenced to life in prison in 1996. In 2024, new evidence has the potential to set them free.

With the release of the fresh true crime rendition, here is a run-through of all the cast members and how they compare to their real-life counterparts.

Nicolas Alexander Chavez as Lyle Menéndez

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Chavez, 25, will be assuming the role of Lyle, the older Menéndez brother and a former Princeton University student. Lyle was suspended from Princeton for an entire year after he was accused of plagiarizing. After his parents’ murders, he spent $300,000 on a down payment for a chicken wing restaurant called Chuck’s Spring Street Cafe.

Viewers may recognize Chavez from General Hospital and Crushed.

Cooper Koch as Erik Menéndez

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The younger Menéndez brother will be played by Koch, the 28-year-old star from Less Than Zero, They/Them, Swallowed, and A New York Christmas Wedding. Erik Menéndez was bound for the University of California Los Angeles before he was arrested for the murder of his parents.

However, before his parents’ death, his father had told him he wasn’t allowed to move in to the dorms. José wanted him to continue living at home and commute to school from Beverly Hills.

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Chloe Sevigny as Kitty Menéndez

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Sevigny, the 49-year-old actress and model celebrated for her roles in American Psycho and The Act, will play Kitty Menéndez in the Netflix adaptation. Kitty, born Mary Louise Andersen, grew up in Wateseka, Illinois. During the Menéndez trial, Lyle testified that his mother had known about the abuse from his father and that she would also “beat and kick” him. According to crime investigator Rachel Pergament, Kitty’s father Charles abused her and her mother Mae Andersen.

Javier Bardem as José Menéndez

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Bardem, who is often known for playing characters with an unhinged verve, will be assuming the role of José Menéndez. The 55-year-old actor has starred in projects including No Country for Old Men, Skyfall, Eat, Pray, Love the new Dune franchise.

José, the patriarch of the Menéndez family, had fled from Cuba to a town in Pennsylvannia when he was a teenager. He attended Southern Illinois University where he met Kitty and lived in New York before eventually settling in Beverly Hills as an entertainment executive. In 1996, Erik said he thought his father was a part of the Mafia.

Ari Graynor as Leslie Abramson

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Graynor, the star of Bad Teacher and The Sopranos, will play Leslie Abramson, Erik’s defense attorney in both trials. At the time, Abramson was a respected defense attorney in California with a proven track record of persuading juries against the death row penalty. Abramson remained close to Erik and Lyle even after the six-year turn of their two trials,

Dallas Roberts as Jerome Oziel

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Roberts, celebrated for his roles in Glass Onion (2022) and The Walking Dead, will be transformed into Dr Jerome Oziel. Oziel was Erik’s psychiatrist. In 1989, Erik confessed to killing his parents during a recorded session with Oziel. The therapist later turned in the tapes as evidence, leading to the brothers’ arrest.

Leslie Grossman as Judalon Smyth

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American Horror Story regular Grossman is taking on the role of Judalon Smyth, Oziel’s mistress. Smyth was listening behind Oziel’s door when Erik confessed to killing his parents. She was Oziel’s former client who became his secret lover. After the two split up, Smyth told the police Oziel had evidence that proved the two brothers were murderers.

Jason Butler Harner as Les Zoeller

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Harner, the 53-year-old actor of Ozark and Edge of Everything, will play Beverly Hills detective Les Zoeller. In addition to the Menéndez case, Zoeller worked on the Billionaire Boys Club Ponzi scheme. He passed away in 2021 after working in the BHPD for 30 years.

Nathan Lane as Dominick Dunne

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Lane, 68, will assume the role of Dominick Dunne, a writer and producer who wrote about the Menéndez trial. Lane is known for his roles in The Gilded Age, Only Murders in the Building, The Good Wife, Modern Family, and The Lion King.

Television coverage of the Paris 2024 Paralympics has reached hundreds of thousands more viewers than the Tokyo Games, with billions more minutes watched across terrestrial and streaming.

Going into the final weekend, Channel 4 said coverage of the Paralympics had reached 18.5 million individuals, equating to 30.4% of the TV population. The broadcaster has described its coverage as “the most accessible Games to date”, with improved British Sign Language and audio offering and audio descriptions.

At the halfway point of the Games, the number of viewers was 4% higher than at the same stage of Tokyo 2020, while streaming views were double. Viewers have spent more time with this year’s Paralympics too, watching 4.3 billion minutes across TV and streaming, up from 2.9 billion by the same stage of Tokyo 2020.

Team GB’s Tully Kearney winning gold in the Women’s 200m Freestyle S5 was among the most-watched moments, bringing in 1.6 million viewers.

Milly Pickles made her TV presenting debut at the games, covering badminton, archery, and conducting interviews with GB medallists for C4. When Pickles had her right leg amputated after an accident seven years ago, she found hope in the idea that she could one day compete in the Paralympics, and trained for a couple of years in the 100m, before focusing on her media career.

“For two years, I said to myself every day: I’ll be in the 2024 Paris Paralympics,” she told the Observer. “Even though it’s not doing a sport, I get to meet so many of the athletes and really understand what motivates them. I feel honoured to be in this position. I’ve loved it.”

Pickles is part of an expanded lineup of disabled presenters, reporters and commentators, from veterans like Ade Adepitan, Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson and The Last Leg’s Adam Hills to fellow newcomers Rose Ayling-Ellis, comedian Fats Timbo, and actor Lenny Rush.

Disabled people are still vastly underrepresented in the UK TV industry. In 2022, only 8.2% of on-screen and 6.5% of off-screen contributions were made by disabled people. Yet 18% of the UK population is disabled.

“For people who are struggling, they might be newly disabled or haven’t had much exposure to people like them, it’s just so reassuring to know you’re not alone,” Pickles said. “When you can see something that you relate to, it helps you have more self-belief that you’re capable too. That is priceless.”

C4’s coverage of previous Paralympics has incorporated BSL and audio description into repeats of daily highlights and comedy show The Last Leg. This year, the daily highlights had live audio description available during live broadcasts, with BSL versions of both programmes broadcast simultaneously on 4Seven. Live sports coverage, presented by Clare Balding and Ayling-Ellis, has featured BSL every afternoon, while live audio description has been part of evening coverage.

Pickles praised efforts to make Paralympics coverage more accessible, and said measures have extended behind the scenes too. “Channel 4 and the Paralympics are showcasing and paving the way for how TV should be done,” she said. “They really are practising what they preach behind the scenes … but it’s going to be a crazy reality when we go back to normal and things are not accessible any more.”

Pickles said witnessing the athletes in action has been “eye-opening” and rekindled her own interest in competing: “I admire them so much. It takes so much skill and mental strength.”

GB athlete Hannah Moore was one of the first disabled people that Pickles met after losing her leg. Moore took home a bronze medal in the triathlon and Pickles had the chance to interview her. “It was a really nice full circle moment to be sat there with her,” Pickles said. “I get to showcase these incredible athletes to the world. No words can describe how that feels.”

There was an undisputed winner of the summer of sport, which ended on Sunday night as the most spectacular Paralympics in living memory came to a close. Sport itself, and the unerring way it keeps so many of us watching – especially in a world where TV viewing figures increasingly resemble Tom Daley diving off a 10-metre platform.

The numbers really were staggering: 23.8 million across BBC and ITV for England’s Euro 2024 final defeat, the highest UK audience of the year. The BBC’s Olympics coverage topped the charts for 17 consecutive days, with 5 million to 7 million viewers. Channel 4 also enjoyed Paralympics audiences that regularly hopped over a million.

Broadcast TV figures have plummeted by 26% since 2015 – yet sport is the bubble that refuses to burst, the ratings winner that bucks the trend. Over the same period, it has fallen just 3%. Some of that is due to big falls in highlight shows, with Sky recently posting record figures for its live Premier League coverage.

All of us will have our favourite moments from the summer: Jude Bellingham’s survive-or-die overhead kick against Slovakia, igniting a previously moribund England; a men’s 1500m final for the ages in Paris; Carlos Alcaraz dissecting Novak Djokovic with a matador’s relish at Wimbledon, before the Serb got revenge at the Olympics. But the fact is we watched it in our droves.

As Enders Analysis, a company regarded as the gold standard for media research, put it in a recent report: “There is still a widespread misconception that sports viewing has declined at the same pace as the rest of broadcast TV due to increased competition, the high price of pay TV and the supposed short attention spans of the social media generation. In fact, sports viewing has been the most resilient component of broadcast TV.”

As Enders points out, it’s not just the big-ticket items on network TV which are flying either. In fact, young viewers now consume nearly half of their sports through Sky, “dwarfing the combined efforts of the BBC and ITV, which refutes the widely held view that young people don’t watch sport behind a paywall”, while TNT Sports has also seen its audience share rise.

That is noteworthy, given price rises and piracy concerns due to firesticks. And there is a final surprise in the Enders report. “Fears that young people are no longer interested in sport are overblown,” it says, pointing out that “sport is now a growing proportion of all under-35s’ live TV set viewing: 17% in 2023, up from 7% in 2015”.

That is backed up by Jonathan Licht, the managing director of Sky Sports. He tells me that on Sunday 1 September, Sky Sports had its highest ever share of total TV viewing audiences for under-35s and women between 2pm and 6pm.

“We’ve talked about how young fans tend to follow sport rather than always watch it,” he says. “But they do come for the big sport. Last weekend when we had Manchester United v Liverpool, the Italian Grand Prix, the Old Firm and the US Open, 60% of all under-35s that were watching TV were tuned to Sky Sports.”

Sky Sports also had more than 10% of all women viewers watching TV last Sunday – a record. “It may be harder to bring those younger audiences to TV generally,” Licht says. “But they are coming in for sport.”

So who are the winners and losers? Unsurprisingly football dominance has grown to the extent that it now “draws more viewing than the next nine sports combined and of the top sports is the youngest skewing”, according to Enders.

Cricket also did well last year, largely because of the Ashes and the Hundred, while Formula One’s audiences have recovered since going behind a paywall in 2019. Women’s football and the NFL are also growing, according to Licht.

The losers? The Enders report points out that rugby’s 2023 World Cup audiences fell a fifth on 2015, despite England doing well, and it also warns that “English club rugby is in an existentially unhealthy state”. Most Olympic sports, outside of the Games, also still struggle. But overall the picture is rosier than you might expect.

How can we explain this? Partly it is because in a world of personalised algorithms and subcultures, sport is one of few glues that bind us together. It helps, too, that it has to be watched live. But Enders also credits broadcasters and leagues “for maintaining sport’s appeal in a changing media landscape”.

There is a final point. Britain really does love sport. That much is made clear in “Game Changing: How sport makes us happier, healthier and better connected”, research out this week.

The report, published by Sky and compiled by the policy agency Public First, says that UK adults “have spent approximately 9.1bn hours watching and participating in sports” in the past year. It also found that 15 million people across the UK “went as far as to say that sport is an important part of their identity”.

And while sport is still seen as the toy factory, and remains down the list of the government’s priorities, the report makes clear the public is keen on more investment to encourage young people to enjoy sport.

Meanwhile, broadcasters continue to face dangerous headwinds. According to Ofcom, less than half of 16- to 24-year-olds now watch TV in an average week, down from 78% in 2018. They also spend far more time on TikTok and YouTube than watching live TV. Sport probably can’t defy this gravity for ever. But so far it is giving it a damn good shot.

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Strictly Come Dancing has unveiled the lineup of songs for week one of the competition, ahead of Saturday night’s first live show of the series.

The show returned to screens last week with a dazzling pre-recorded show to mark the beginning of its 20th anniversary series after months of scandal surrounding the programme’s professional dancers.

However, the pressure will rise this week as the 15 celebrity contestants perform live for the first time before the voting – and first elimination of the series – happens next weekend.

This week’s routines include three cha chas, two foxtrots, two tangos, two sambas and a Viennese waltz.

Comedian Chris McCausland and his partner Dianne Buswell will perform a cha cha to “Twist and Shout”’ by The Beatles, with TV doctor Punam Krishnan and Gorka Márquez performing the same style to Kylie Minogue’s “Love at First Sight”.

Former Love Island contestant Tasha Ghouri and Aljaž  Škorjanec will also dance a cha cha to Sabrina Carpenter’s summer anthem, “Espresso”.

As announced last week, former Arsenal/England player Paul Merson will be paying homage to his sport by performing the intriguing combination of an American Smooth to the popular football chant song “Vindaloo” by Fat Les.

Gladiators star Montell Douglas and Johannes Radebe will be foxtrotting to “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby?” by Dinah Washington, while Olympic Hockey player Sam Quek and Nikita Kuzmin are also performing a foxtrot to The Supremes’ hit “Where Did Our Love Go”.

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Tango-ing this week are Olympic swimmer Tom Dean and Nadiya Bychkova dancing to Harry Styles’s “Golden”, while Toyah Willcox and Neil Jones performing Madonna’s “Ray of Light”.

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In the samba corner are Shayne Ward and Nancy Xu, dancing to Stevie Wonder’s “Do I Do”, and Wynne Evans and Katya Jones performing Tom Jones’s “Help Yourself”.

TOWIE’s Pete Wicks and his partner Jowita Przystał will be performing what will likely be a fiery paso doble to “Breathe” by The Prodigy.

EastEnders star Jamie Borthwick and Michelle Tsiakkas will dance a Viennese Waltz to Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” and JLS’s JB Gill and Amy Dowden will perform a classic waltz to “When I Need You” by Leo Sayer.