DTF St Louis ★★★★½
Don’t be misled by the suggestive title. HBO Max’s new limited series is a quietly thoughtful and bittersweet viewing experience. Galvanised by a suspicious death, this story of male best friends – where one of the men is secretly having an affair with the other’s wife – can play as a drily black comedy or a suburban noir. But even as it moves to these genre contours, the central performances and the writing keep unearthing new strands of humanity, whether flawed or bewildering.
Found dead in compromising circumstances, Floyd Smernitch (David Harbour) is a burly sign language interpreter who worked alongside his pal, local television weatherman Clark Forrest (Jason Bateman). The two St Louis cops from different departments partnered on the case, Jodie Plumb (Joy Sunday) and Donoghue Homer (Richard Jenkins), soon have a file filled with questions where the obvious answers keep being dispelled. The plot quickly makes clear that Clark was having an affair with Floyd’s wife, Carol Love-Smernitch (Linda Cardellini). The why is a different matter.
DTF St Louis, named for the hook-up app Clark introduces Floyd to in one of the many illuminating flashbacks, was written and directed by Steven Conrad. His previous shows, including Amazon Prime Video’s droll espionage tale Patriot, had lashings of absurdism and elevated circumstances. There’s still hints of that here – Floyd’s penis curvature is a recurring topic – but the show, set in 2018, is deliberately everyday. These are ordinary people, at first glance, whose circumstances and dreams and desires are revealed to be anything but.
The central relationships are patiently stitched together, so you can see the best intentions and the damaging turning points. Floyd projects as a jolly buffoon initially, but he’s so genuine and hopeful that the audience, like Clark, wants him to succeed, and there is an entire plot with Floyd and his disaffected stepson that goes from comical to heartwarming. Conrad keeps sneaking empathy into the deception, and subverting expectations. Every exchange between the mismatched Plumb and Homer is amusingly deadpan.
There is so much for the cast to work with. Disenchantment, self-loathing, renewal, and buried optimism bubble up through the long, and often tender, exchanges. The great Peter Sarsgaard turns up in a small recurring role, which reminds you how great Sarsgaard is. A visual gag will play off personal anguish, or vice versa, but either way the impact always resonates. Sad comedy or funny tragedy? Either way, few recent shows have inspired such a level of reflection in me. I’m going to be thinking about DTF St Louis for a long time.
DTF St. Louis premieres on March 1 on HBO Max.
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Craig Mathieson is a TV, film and music writer for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X.
