OJ Simpson Made in America review: Before the fall there was grace and beauty

It's not just because he was a football superstar that the notion of passing looms large in this five-part, seven-and-a-half-hour telling of the OJ Simpson story. It's because he was so determined to erase race from his story, to pass unmarked by his ghetto origins as he moved through the rarefied air of white American celebrity.

"Passing" is a loaded term in African-American identity politics, but OJ was more than happy to take that ball and run with it.

Made for the cable sports channel ESPN, OJ: Made in America is a remarkable piece of work, rich in detail and nuance. It's not only about the murder in 1994 of Simpson's white ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman and the trial that followed, which was the terrain of the similarly impressive drama The People v OJ Simpson: American Crime Story. Yet the spectre of that awful event hangs heavy over everything, each moment appearing both as itself and as a clue to what would later unfold.

The first movie-length episode traces the rise of Orenthal James Simpson from a poor neighbourhood in San Francisco to his record-breaking career on the sports field, and the celebrity endorsements and forays into Hollywood that followed.

Centre of attention: OJ Simpson enjoyed life in the spotlight.

For many of us in Australia, OJ was little known before 1994; our notion of him as a celebrity was formed in those moments he lay crouched in the back seat of a white Ford Bronco, gun allegedly at his own head, as the car hurtled down a Los Angeles freeway, hotly pursued by a fleet of police cars, with news helicopters hovering overhead.

Though it opens with Simpson being grilled in a courtroom – over subsequent charges, in 2008 – this episode largely serves as back story, and it is a revelation.

We see Simpson as a young college footballer, and he is a thing of beauty, both on the field and off. He's clean-cut, eloquent, with a face like a Roman statue and the grace of the truly exceptional athlete. He couldn't catch a ball for quids, but he could run and dodge like no one else.

Archival footage of him at his fleet-footed best makes it clear how special he was. Interview subjects – bizarrely, none of them identified on screen – talk in hushed tones of "the run", a 64-yard dash that ended in a touchdown for Simpson, and victory for his school, USC, against arch-rivals UCLA in what many regard as the greatest game of college football ever played. It's impossible for even the most grid-iron ignorant to be unimpressed.

Simpson played professionally for the Buffalo Bills and the San Francisco 49ers.

Even then, in 1967, Simpson was on the radar, and the abundant interview and game footage that survives is a gift that director Ezra Edelman employs to great advantage. Through slow accretion of detail, he builds a portrait of a man determined to shape his own destiny. He refused to let either his poor origins or his race limit him, or identify him.

For a while at least, white society was happy to play along. He was the epitome of the integrated black man – so integrated that he was hardly black at all. He was a threat to none, a hero to all.

Reacting to evidence during his trial for the murders of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.

And then, of course, the deaths – of which he was found not guilty in criminal court but liable in civil court – changed everything. Race was suddenly an issue, perhaps the issue.

In some ways, the double murder was about far more than one man's alleged transgressions. It signalled the return of the repressed in the most complex and brutal way imaginable.

How we got there from here promises to be fascinating.

OJ: Made In America, SBS, Monday 21 November at 8.30pm

Karl Quinn is on Facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on Twitter @karlkwin