“No one’s normal. It just looks that way from across the street.”
Confidently written, acted, and directed, HBO’s “DTF St. Louis” could be called a suburban noir. It has all the double crosses, hidden secrets, and betrayals of the beloved genre, even if most of it takes place in suburban Missouri sunlight instead of the darkened chambers of a major city. It’s a wickedly entertaining show, especially the premiere, which sets the foundation for creator Steven Conrad’s (“The Weather Man,” TV’s underrated “Patriot”) devious tale of sexual exploration gone wrong. “DTF St. Louis” is also a wickedly difficult show to review without spoiling some of its smartest choices, but I’m down to try.
Jason Bateman plays St. Louis weatherman Clark Forrest, who becomes BFFs with his station’s ASL translator Floyd (David Harbour) from pretty much his first day on the job, as the pair survives a vicious storm. Clark and Floyd do all the suburban dude things like go to chain restaurants, work out together, and play cornhole. They also start to express a bit of malaise in their relationships, especially Floyd, who has grown sexually distant from his wife Carol (Linda Cardellini) since she got a job working as an umpire to help bring in some much-needed extra cash to help out with a private school for her troubled son Richard (Arlan Ruf). Conrad gets a lot of mileage out of footage of Cardellini in her umpire gear, looking about as unsexual as possible. The extra weight that Floyd has been working hard to shed isn’t helping matters either.
One day on a swing set, Clark tells Floyd about a story on his news program about a new app called “DTF St. Louis.” (If you don’t know what DTF means, look it up.) Suffice to say, it’s one of those apps for local married people looking for sexual connections without frills. The tender Floyd seems hesitant at first, but agrees if Clark will do it with him. Cut to months later, and one of the three members of this triangle is dead, sparking an investigation by a local cop named Donoghue Homer (Richard Jenkins) and a special crimes officer named Jodie Plumb (Joy Sunday). She immediately senses the crime scene isn’t what it first seems, sending the pair digging into the sordid saga of Clark, Floyd, and Carol.
Conrad’s writing captures how illicit and sometimes even criminal behavior can happen right under the polished perfection of suburban America. Trysts can be planned at Jamba Juice; infidelity can be considered on the swing set you built for your kid; affairs can begin at cornhole parties. It’s too character-driven to be called satire, but it winks at the ridiculousness of all of this, how violence can erupt in the most mundane places in the country, locations that have often built themselves on an illusion of safety.
Of course, few are better at selling how quickly an everyman’s life can go off the rails than “Ozark” star Bateman. He does his best work in years, but he’s really just a part of a flawless ensemble. Jenkins reminds one how confidently great he can be with the right material; Sunday works brilliantly off him by pitching her character to an entirely different register; Cardellini knows how to play the mystery of a woman who may be much more than she seems. There’s not a weak link in the entire cast, down to the smallest parts.
However, the episodes sent to press belong to Harbour, who finds the core of Floyd’s decency in a way that makes him resonate. This is a guy who loves his life but wonders if there isn’t something more out there to make him happier. He loves his wife, stepson, and best friend Clark, and Harbour sells that love without turning him into a caricature. That’s at the core of why “DTF St. Louis” works so well: there’s a version of this that cruelly mocks middle-aged sexuality or even just suburbia, but Conrad and his cast thread that needle in how they highlight the silliness of it all in a way that’s genuinely very funny without ever mocking their characters.
There are times during the third and fourth episodes sent to press when I wondered the classic question of the modern TV mini-series: Should this have just been a movie? While it never succumbs to the bloat so common in the genre, there are times when the pace feels designed more for stretching out to a season than it should, but they’re just far enough apart to never completely derail momentum. And every time that feeling surfaces, one of the cast members makes a choice that would have been cut in the movie version of this tale to push it away. After all, this kind of deception takes time.
Four episodes screened for review. Premieres on HBO on Sunday, March 1.
