Viewers of Ryan Murphy’s latest true-crime series, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, are divided over the portrayal of the two brothers’ relationship.

Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story fictionalises the true story of the Beverly Hills brothers who shot and killed their parents, José and Kitty, one evening in August 1989.

It’s a complex tale, which culminated in Lyle and Erik, then 21 and 19 respectively, entering a room in their parents’ mansion and shooting them dead while they watched TV. The details are gruesome: José was shot six times, Kitty 10 – including as she crawled away weeping.

The brothers spent seven months evading suspicion and spending their parents’ money before being arrested and charged.

But the back-story is perhaps even more gruesome: during their trials, they claimed to have been the victims of serious sexual abuse at the hands of their father. They alleged José had threatened to kill them if they ever spoke up, and other family members testified that both brothers had confided in them about the abuse while still children.

The defence hoped – in vain, it turned out – to have the brothers tried for manslaughter, rather than murder, because of the alleged abuse. The pair were eventually convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in 1996 and jailed for life without the possibility of parole.

Murphy’s new Netflix adaptation of the crime and trial, in which General Hospital star Nicholas Chavez and They/Them actor Cooper Koch play the murderous siblings, is already courting controversy. 

Aside from fairly standard accusations of glorifying true crime or being unfaithful to the story’s finer details, one of the bigger issues dividing viewers is the portrayal of Lyle and Erik’s relationship with each other.

In one scene, Lyle is seen kissing a shirtless Erik goodbye, and another shows them dancing together at a party, seemingly kissing each other on the neck and putting their fingers in each other’s mouth.

In another, earlier scene, the pair are in a bathroom together, where Lyle is naked.

A homoerotic scene also shows Erik seemingly flirting with a fellow inmate while naked in the prison showers. Pamela Bozanich, a prosecutor in the trial, is noted as having once said: “We knew Erik was gay and having oral sex with the inmates.” However, neither brother has ever publicly identified as gay.

On social media, some have dubbed the scenes “incestuous fetish porn [that] exploits” the brothers’ harrowing story. On the flip side, others have come to Murphy’s defence, saying the scenes are intentional, to indicate how the pair’s experience of sexual abuse “skewed their mind-set” when it comes to inter-personal relationships.