Add DTF St Louis to your watchlist
**Contains spoilers from episode 1 of DTF St Louis.**
More often than not, new shows have a habit of feeling like a version of something you've seen before. Even if it's not a prequel or a sequel, a reboot or a reimagining, there's a flavour, so to speak, that evokes something else.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in the crime genre, where it's increasingly rare to find originality – although tried and tested formulas can still deliver satisfying results if executed well. Case in point: Mare of Easttown.
But DTF St Louis, a darkly comic murder-mystery airing on HBO in the US and Sky Atlantic in the UK, feels fresh and uninhibited by what has come before.
Created, written and directed by Steve Conrad (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Pursuit of Happyness), the limited series stars Ozark's Jason Bateman ("I appreciate Jason’s commitment to showing the rest of the world how strange the state of Missouri truly is at its core," reads one YouTube comment) and David Harbour as colleagues Clark Forrest, a local weatherman, and Floyd Smernitch, a sign language interpreter. It's not your average crime series dynamic, that's for sure.
The pair strike up a friendship after Floyd narrowly stops Clark from being decapitated by a stop sign while reporting on an incoming tornado and they grow close – so close, in fact, that Clark, who's married and has two kids, feels comfortable enough to share a dark secret with Floyd.
He's downloaded a hook-up app: DTF St Louis (that's 'down to f**k', for the uninitiated. Fans of Jersey Shore, of which this writer was regrettably one, will already be well acquainted with the term). And he gently encourages Floyd, who's also married (Linda Cardellini plays his wife Carol) to do the same.
After some hesitation, Floyd follows Clark's lead (a Duane Reade bag has yet to make an appearance) – and then he winds up dead, his body uncovered in a pool house propped up next to a Bloody Mary in a can and, interestingly, some gay porn.
Curiouser and curiouser.
DTF St Louis constantly finds ways to surprise you. While it doesn't come as a shock that Clark and Carol were having an affair (it was right there in the way they greeted each other at his cornhole party), you certainly don't anticipate that Floyd knows. He's an easy man to underestimate, and the show also enjoys playing with timeline and perspective, which makes the moment he drops that bomb – delivered so calmly, and in sign language of all things – truly delicious television.
Deploying needle drops is an art form and Ozzy Osbourne's spiky rendition of Sunshine of Your Love works exquisitely here, capturing both the sexual charge between Clark and Carol and the huge "Oh, f**k" rattling around Clark's head after he's been arrested for murder live on air. And people say the weather is boring.
But is he really capable of murdering his friend? Even if all signs points to Clark being guilty – his recumbent bike captured on CCTV, the affair – DTF St Louis has set out its stall as a show that doesn't play by the rules, so perhaps not.
And that doesn't just extend to the central mystery. Eyebrow-raising moments and absurd dialogue are par for the course across the four episodes made available for review. Unusual professions are standard practice – Floyd used to be married to a fortune teller; in one scene, he encounters a roller dancer and hypnotist.
It's certainly not every day you meet a porn positive detective, and Floyd's passion for hip-hop dance is an inspired turn. Plus, who knew Harbour could pop it and lock it quite so gracefully?
Then there's Clark and Carol, who refer to their hook-ups at the Quality Garden Suites as "dream meetings", granting each other's niche sexual desires, such as Clark being unpacked from a cardboard box as he pretends to be a sex robot, or Carol sitting on his face while she "goes about her tasks", like ringing FedEx. Two birds, one stone.
When she first tells him, "You can do anything with me. You never have to have any fears about sharing anything with me," it reads like a cheap male fantasy. Having sex with your friend's hot wife – and she's game for anything? Yup, we've seen this film before. Except we haven't.
DTF St Louis makes no bones about its weirdness, or how disappointing or cruel life can be, but it has a soft underbelly. As per Conrad's earlier work, he is clearly drawn to stories about people who have done an inventory of their lives and decided they want more – or just different.
That often surfaces in the quieter moments: Floyd's clothes don't fit properly, so he's trying to "lose a few"; he attempts to connect with his socially reclusive, rock-throwing stepson by going to therapy with him.
That desire for more might also manifest as an affair with someone who understands you more than your partner, and who doesn't judge your kinks — there's a distinct lack of judgement in this series — or embracing hip-hop dance as an out of shape, middle-aged white man.
Putting aside the salacious, scandalous aspects of DTF St Louis, the series threads grounded, human concerns through the eccentricity, like, what comes first: midlife malaise or a marriage in decline? Or does the decline of a marriage facilitate midlife malaise?
The show's preoccupation with connection, meaning, reinvention and self-growth is deceptively confronting, and never once dulled by the many off-kilter things people say and do in this glum-looking Midwestern suburb that appears entirely normal from the outside.
But as one gentleman puts it: "Nobody's normal, they just look that way from across the street."
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