Ryan Murphy’s last screen offering was the existentially terrible All’s Fair. It was critically panned, as any show that contains the lines: “He owns, like, all of cosmetics”, “You’re the best lawyers in town – maybe the country!” and a fruit basket “lightly brushed with salmonella and faecal matter”, while somehow managing to bypass humour, camp and brio, deserves to be. It got an unprecedented zero rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a no-stars review here on the grounds that it was so-bad-it-was-bad, and has duly been commissioned for a second series.

By that measure, Murphy’s new show is a triumph. The Beauty has a plot, structure, characters that often act, react and speak as real human beings might, a sense of what it’s doing and where it’s going and – whisper it – even a touch of commentary on the state of society today. It’s almost like old American anthology days, when Murphy threw the likes of The People v OJ Simpson, Feud and The Assassination of Gianni Versace at us one after the other; leasing new lives to Sarah Paulson, Jessica Lange and assorted other glorious figures, and having us believe the good times would roll for ever.

The new, 11-part series belongs firmly to the genre of body horror, so be prepared for plenty of gore and more than a few “yikes!” as we go along. It is based on the comic book of the same name, written by Jeremy Haun and Jason A Hurley, and follows two FBI agents as they investigate the spread of a sexually transmitted disease that makes infected parties spectacularly beautiful before it makes them spectacularly dead. Yes! It’s a satire on unrealistic beauty standards. And Ozempic culture! And much else besides, but we open with Bella Hadid breaking necks at a catwalk show, punching paparazzi unconscious and smashing up restaurants in search of water to quench her apparently burning thirst, so let’s start there.

She is the first of what becomes a veritable epidemic of exploding supermodels across the world (“Catwalk Carnage!” scream newspaper headlines, as well they might), with coltish brunettes going rogue before either bursting bloodily all over the streets or turning into literally smoking hot bodies who have burned from the inside out, leaving only charred ribcages in expensively dressed beds behind.

Catwalk carnage … Bella Hadid as Ruby in The Beauty on Disney+. Photograph: FX. All Rights Reserved.

Investigating this mayhem are detectives Jordan Bennett (Rebecca Hall) and Cooper Madsen (Evan Peters), who are also lovers and pretending not to be falling in love with each other. Jordan has recently had breast implants, as a belated response to school bullies who dubbed her “The Itty-Bitty Titty Committee”, to show us that even tough FBI agents with guns and badges are not immune to the insidious effects of tyrannical western beauty standards.

More social commentary arrives in the form of Jeremy (soon to be played by Jeremy Pope), whom we first meet as an isolated masturbator typing one-handed in what looks to be his mother’s – or late mother’s – basement in New Jersey. After a camgirl gets a better offer and disappears from view, he seeks alternative solace. “I’m lost,” he tells a doctor. “I want a purpose. Do you think I should do standup?” (This is when, as a viewer, you truly begin to relax and believe that Murphy has found his form again.) But the doctor is a plastic surgeon and has other ideas. “You are an incel, Jeremy. I can make you a Chad.”

And lo, it comes to pass. Thus we and Jeremy learn of the existence of the virus that can make America aesthetically great again. It has been invented – and here comes even more social commentary dressed snazzily up as a good time – by a tech billionaire, Byron Forst (Ashton Kutcher), also known as the Corporation, now aided by a man called the Assassin (Anthony Ramos) to try to keep control of the chaos that is being unleashed. Who knew that a beauty virus spread by sexual contact would be so hard to manage?

All this and Isabella Rossellini, too! And in the most incredible wardrobe. Don’t duck out until you’ve see her opening scene, at least. Her character’s name is Franny Forst, which makes me very much suspect she is related to Byron, and acting between Rossellini and Kutcher is a notion of such deliciousness that I could pass out from delight at the mere idea.

In short, The Beauty is a return to bingeable Murphy goodness (and a harking back, subject-wise, to arguably some of his best work, Nip/Tuck). It hovers between a three and four star review for me but I’m rounding up out of sheer relief.