The FX limited series Impeachment: American Crime Story, which premiered Tuesday, is the water-cooler show of the week, with virtually every news outlet that covers TV having some opinion on the Ryan Murphy-executive-produced dramatic portrayal of the infamous Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal.
But while cord-cutters have pretty much come to expect immediate streaming access to high-profile entertainment programming, they're going to have to wait until next year to stream this show.
Normally, shows that debut on FX and FXX show up on Hulu the next day. But thanks to an exclusive output deal with Netflix for American Crime Story-branded shows made by 20th Century Fox in 2016--before Disney purchased Fox's entertainment assets--this latest ACS installment is shut out of Hulu, a Disney-Comcast joint venture.
In fact, Impeachment won't make its subscription streaming debut until 2022 on Netflix.
This means that, for now, the limited series is confined to the pay TV ecosystem, the vast majority of which bundles FX. The show can be streamed via virtual MVPDs like Sling TV. It can also be streamed via FX's authenticated TV Everywhere platform, FXNow.
Those who refuse to pony up for linear or virtual pay TV do have one other line of recourse to see Impeachment: An American Crime Story: Transactional video-on-demand, aka TVOD.
Episode 1 for what is the third season of American Crime Story is available for purchase right now on Amazon for $2.99. You can also buy the complete third season for $19.99 and binge on the show ahead of everyone else.
Notably, ACS' third season--which brands a tawdry extramarital affair as a "crime" on par with Season 1's revisitation of civilly liable killer O.J. Simpson's double-murder criminal acquittal, or Season 2's focus on the assassination of Gianni Versace--isn't pleasing critics quite the way the first two seasons did.
Rotten Tomatoes aggregation scores Impeachment at 69%, vs. an impressive 97% for 2016's The People vs. O.J. Simpson and an 89% for 2018's The Assassination of Giovanni Versace.
Impeachment: American Crime Story recasts Sarah Paulson, an Emmy winner for her portrayal as flummoxed prosecutor Marcia Clark in The People vs. O.J. Simpson, as the treacherous Linda Tripp. Carmela Soprano herself, acclaimed actress Edie Falco, plays Hilary Rodham Clinton, while up-and-comer Beanie Feldstein has the lead role of Lewinsky.
