Officially speaking, the new HBO black comedy DTF St. Louis has nothing to do with the 2017 New Yorker article it was set to adapt. While the series began development in 2022 as an adaptation of “My Dentist’s Murder Trial” by James Lasdun, it was retooled into its own sordid saga of suburban purgatory, infidelity, and the rush to feel something new amid middle-aged ennui. But DTF St. Louis‘s impressive first episode, “Cornhole,” possesses the very traits that made Lasdun’s article a riveting piece of long-read true crime.
The article chronicles how the writer’s dentist, Dr. Gilberto Nunez, was arrested and tried for the murder of a friend, whose wife he’d been sleeping with. Its evocations of landmarks that dot American suburbia paint a vivid portrait of humdrum living: dentist offices, karate schools, Olive Gardens, a fateful weekend at Mohegan Sun Casino. The body is found at a Planet Fitness parking lot, and the dentist drove a white Nissan Pathfinder. In spite of the grisliness of the crime, it’s hard not to laugh a little when, for example, the lurid text messages of perfectly grown adults are read aloud. (Recounts Lasdun: “‘Your kisses today, I can still feel them. OMG.’ Linda replied, ‘That good, huh?'”) It all screams ’90s-era Coen Brothers, and frankly, I’m shocked neither is involved in the series. (Its creator is Steven Conrad, screenwriter of The Pursuit of Happyness and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.)
DTF St. Louis sands down the specifics of Lasdun’s article, for what I would wager are legal reasons, but its spirit remains the same. The new seven-part series stars Jason Bateman and David Harbour as new colleagues who reveal a shared acknowledgement that their sex lives with their wives are unfulfilling. Bateman’s Clark Forrest, a spectacled TV weatherman who resembles an alt-universe Stephen Colbert, tells him about hookup dating apps. With comical enunciation, he explains the “DTF” part: “Down to fuck.”
Eventually, Harbour’s salt-and-pepper-haired Floyd, an American sign language interpreter, learns Clark is sleeping with his wife Carol (Linda Cardellini). Eight weeks later, Floyd is dead, surrounded by empty bottles and a gay porno spread in a public pool. That’s when the second set of protagonists enters the scene: Richard Jenkins and Joy Sunday, as two officers from competing units who reluctantly work together to piece together this unusual erotic puzzle.
From the jump, DTF St. Louis knows the show it wants to be. Before the sex and murder, there’s Bateman rolling out of his driveway on a recumbent tricycle; a red flag sticking from the rear is too obvious a symbol. Harbour appears with a prodigious beer belly, his belt on the verge of breaking into a whipping snap. (One assumes Harbour is only enjoying having no obligations to stay fit for Avengers: Doomsday.) Between them is Carol, a wine mom bombshell whose disdain for her husband’s quirks is made clear by her silent mockery. Populating these midwestern suburbs of manicured lawns and board game shops are middle achievers with minuscule dreams, inside a delectably directed show where extreme camera angles, natural lighting, and a melancholic score lend a solid, if unexpected Terrence Malick impression.
“Cornhole” sets the table for an adult love triangle in its first half before pivoting into a hard-boiled investigation in the second, when Sunday and Jenkins’ polar opposite detectives meet and immediately clash over their right of jurisdiction. Jenkins’ Homer, a far cry from Columbo, is eager to write off everything as a tragic case of a closeted man’s isolation. But Sunday’s Plumb, a special crimes officer, insists there’s more. She’s right. Her instincts take her from security cameras to bike shops to the arrest of Clark. But did Clark actually kill Floyd?
In the New Yorker article, the dentist Nunez was found not guilty of murder (though he was guilty of equally serious forgery charges). His friend died of a heart attack, although his body had traces of midazolam, a dentist’s sedative. There’s doubt, planted by Lasdun, for readers to think that Nunez is innocent. In DTF St. Louis, Floyd dies with “a profound amount” of Amphezyne in his body. “His heart stopped,” Homer states. The show appears equally hellbent to walk its former source text’s same line of ambiguity and mystery. During questioning, Clark is asked point-blank why he killed his friend. “Cornhole,” he replies with a chuckle. He doesn’t admit guilt, bear in mind. But the end of the episode is the start of a fractured image finally coming together.
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