WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO MAKING ‘FEUD’ A FUN SHOW?

Wow, I haven’t seen anything this great in years! The art, the color, the creativity! Just dazzling! I wish I were talking about the new Ryan Murphy anthology series “Feud: Bette and Joan,” but I’m talking about the show’s credits. They are an exquisite homage to great opening credits for big Hollywood movies of the ’60s.

As for “Feud” itself, Ryan, baby, what happened? What should have at least been the campiest funfest of the century is about as flat as Joan Crawford’s (Jessica Lange) chest without her everpresent falsies. Developed and directed by Murphy, based on a screenplay by Jaffe Cohen and Michael Zam, “Feud’s” eight-episode first season is about the thorny relationship between Bette Davis (Susan Sarandon) and Crawford when they worked together on Robert Aldrich’s (Alfred Molina) 1962 camp horror classic, “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”

Lange is always interesting, but she’s

only occasionally convincing here as Crawford. The voice is too high, for one thing. Sarandon fares better, as much good as that does with such a lousy script. Judy Davis is great as Hedda Hopper, and Stanley Tucci is solid as Jack Warner. Kathy Bates is terribly miscast as Joan Blondell, but Catherine Zeta-Jones is pretty good as Olivia de Havilland. The great Jackie Hoffman, with that wondrously expressive punim, is hilarious but out of place as Joan’s factotum, Mamacita.

“Bette and Joan” should have been a movie, not the first season of an anthology series. That might have helped focus Murphy’s usually noteworthy skills as a writer and director. The costumes, set and production details are dazzling, but otherwise, as Sarandon says in Davis’ line from “Beyond the Forest,” “What a dump.” Pretty much.