"Don't you think that this embarrasses the President of the United States?", A young woman named Paula Jones (Annaleigh Ashford) from Arkansas is asked in a television interview in the second episode of "American Crime Story: Impeachment".

She claims that then Governor Bill Clinton exposed himself to her and made sexual advances.

“You know,” says the young woman, perplexed, “I didn't do this.

He's the one who did something to me.

He put himself in that position. ”It is a reenactment of a scene that was seen on American television in June 1994.

CNN journalist Judy Woodruff actually asks that question.

It's been over twenty-five years since Jones insisted on an apology from the president.

She took her case to the Supreme Court;

it was to spark the impeachment proceedings against Clinton.

Ryan Murphy's "Impeachment", the third season of his "American Crime" series after "The People v.

OJ Simpson ”and“ The Assassination of Gianni Versace ”recounts all of this, and it is a retrospective that is well worth seeing.

"There is no sexual relationship"

The central figure in the scandal was, of course, Monica Lewinsky, then twenty-two years old. As a White House intern, she had an eighteen month affair with Clinton that became public during the trial initiated by Paula Jones. The fact that Clinton affirmed under oath that "there is no sexual relationship" with Lewinsky led to charges of perjury and obstruction of justice and ultimately to impeachment proceedings. Clinton survived the trial. Monica Lewinsky became a pariah and the target of endless stale jokes.

The main character of the series is initially not Lewinsky (Beanie Feldstein), but Linda Tripp, played with devotion by Ryan Murphy's muse Sarah Paulson (she was the secret main character as prosecutor Marcia Clark in "The People v. OJ Simpson").

Tripp is a low-ranking government official.

She perceives her transfer from the White House to the Pentagon as a humiliation.

With a whistleblowing book about the White House, she wants to get the attention she thinks it deserves.

When she runs into Monica Lewinsky and makes her her confidante on matters relating to Clinton, the plan seems to be working.

Romantic gifts in the West Wing

"Impeachment" tells the scandal from the perspective of women: Paula Jones, Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky.

It is women who are manipulated and betrayed by men, but also by other women.

It is thanks to the usual sharp eye of Ryan Murphys and his authors that these are more than the victims of male power arrogance and sexual advantage - and that Clinton, played by Clive Owen, does not appear as a monster either.

Feldstein's Lewinsky is a romantically deluded young woman who falls head over heels into an affair with the president.

She sits feverishly in front of the phone, she visits him all the time in the West Wing with presents and wants to protect him even when he chills her.