‘Feud’ leads off the spring TV season with a bang

As Baby Jane Hudson put it, “All this time, we could have been friends?”

Yes, it’s true. Bette Davis and Joan Crawford — Hollywood icons working side-by-side for the first time in 1962’s “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” — could have and probably should have been friends.

Instead, they let a petty rivalry escalate into a feud of legendary proportions.

On the plus side, their battle has inspired the most addictive new show of the spring TV season.

“Feud: Bette and Joan” — starring Susan Sarandon as Davis and Jessica Lange as Crawford — chronicles the bitter backstage star wars that took place during and after the making of “Baby Jane.”

The eight-episode series premieres at 9 p.m. Sunday on FX.

Frankly, “Feud” is far more compelling than the plot of “Baby Jane,” in which a demented ex-child star (Davis as Jane) tormented her paraplegic sister (Crawford as Blanche) in an old Hollywood mansion.

The behind-the-scenes antics began with Davis upstaging her co-star at every turn and ended with Crawford exacting revenge by sabotaging the other’s Best Actress Oscar chances.

The network is so high on “Feud” that it already has ordered a second season, which will focus on a very different pair: Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

Coming from writer/director/executive producer Ryan Murphy (of “American Horror Story”/“Glee”/“The People v. O.J. Simpson” fame), season one of “Feud” has everything going for it.

In addition to Sarandon and Lange, the cast includes Alfred Molina as director Robert Aldrich (who’s just as desperate for a hit as his “has-been” leading ladies), Stanley Tucci as studio executive Jack Warner, Judy Davis as gossip columnist Hedda Hopper and an unrecognizable Catherine Zeta-Jones as Olivia de Havilland.

Visually, the show is a masterpiece re-creation of 1960s Hollywood — while the retro Saul Bass-style main title sequence is a marvel to behold.

And then there’s the buoyant script, packed with quotable dialogue and perfected by snarky delivery.

Can’t wait to see how Lange and Sarandon chew scenery when they re-create what is probably the most famous exchange of the movie:

“You wouldn’t be able to do these awful things to me if I weren’t still in this chair.”

“But you are, Blanche! You are in that chair!”

And it’s bound to be epic when they re-create the jaw-dropping moment at the Academy Awards.

On the big night, Davis didn’t win Best Actress, as she had expected to. Then Crawford stepped up to accept the Oscar statuette on Anne Bancroft’s behalf.

If that hadn’t actually happened, no writer could get away with putting it in a TV script.

This story was originally published March 2, 2017 at 11:59 AM with the headline "‘Feud’ leads off the spring TV season with a bang."