DTF St. Louis TV Review: Jason Bateman and David Harbour are best friends in HBO’s hilarious dark new series

Plot: A darkly comedic tale of three middle-aged individuals entangled in a love triangle, leading to one’s untimely demise.

Review: Pairing Jason Bateman and David Harbour as a pair of guys in their late forties who forge a new friendship looked like a match made in comedy heaven based on the trailer for DTF St. Louis. Midlife crises and adultery have been fodder for films and shows before, but with two actors who can handle comedy and drama in equal measure as they plumb the depths of toxic masculinity, it is boosted by showrunner Steve Conrad, who has a penchant for taking audiences in directions they may not be ready to venture. Co-starring Linda Cardellini, Richard Jenkins, and Joy Sunday, audiences are not ready for where DTF St. Louis is going, but I am not entirely sure I know where that final destination will be. Nevertheless, the journey is just starting to get interesting.

Set in suburban St. Louis in 2018, DTF St. Louis introduces us to local weatherman Clark Forrest (Jason Bateman), who befriends newly hired sign language interpreter Floyd Smernitch (David Harbour) when Floyd pulls Clark out of the way of getting killed by a flying stop sign during a live report of a tornado. The two men could not be more different. Clark is a local celebrity who lives with his wife and two daughters in relative comfort. Floyd is struggling financially and emotionally with his wife, Carol (Linda Cardellini), and with forging a bond with his stepson, Richard (Arlan Ruf). When Clark confides in Floyd that he heard about a new app called DTF St. Louis, the new friends decide to confide in each other about pursuing extramarital affairs. The wrinkle that Steve Conrad adds to the mix is within the opening minutes of the series, we learn that Clark and Carol are having an affair and that Floyd ends up dead at a local swimming pool. What follows is a mix of murder mystery and examination of the challenge of being an adult stuck in middle age.

As St. Louis detective Donoghue Homer (Richard Jenkins) and suburban special crimes officer Jodie Plumb (Wednesday‘s Joy Sunday) begin to unravel clues as to how Clark, Floyd, and Carol were interconnected, DTF St. Louis unfurls a web of lies and misdirection that keeps you guessing from one episode to the next. Having seen four of the seven episodes of this series, each of which clocks in close to a full hour, it is difficult to pinpoint where this story is going. The trailer does a great job of making you think you are in for a black comedy version of the Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis comedy Hall Pass, but DTF St. Louis feels closer to the Paul Rudd and Tim Robinson film, Friendship. This is a stark drama with a bleak sense of humor that often borders on the surreal. You will laugh as much as you cringe at some of the things in store during this series that are underplayed in such a way that you cannot help but laugh. David Harbour, who packed on weight for the role, often wears ill-fitting clothes that expose his gut or chest, yet the actor brings a physicality to playing Floyd that works within the show’s context. A running joke about Carol dressed as an umpire, and Clark’s recumbent bicycle, is just a teaser of the strangely hilarious feeling of this series.

With each successive episode of the series, DTF St. Louis defies expectations and is constantly shifting what you think is happening and the motivations behind the actions of the main characters. At its core, this series is about the tenuous friendship between Clark and Floyd and the rift it causes in just a few short months. By the end of the first episode, you may think you know where the story is going, and it takes a different direction in the next chapter. The satirical edge to the humor in DTF St. Louis is at odds with the heartfelt story at the center, which also clashes with the investigatory side of the narrative. Richard Jenkins and Joy Sunday play investigators from completely different generational backgrounds, and yet their conflicting approaches to solving crimes make them better partners than any of the romantic entanglements in this series. Sunday offers the most notable female presence, aside from Linda Cardellini’s Carol, a dual-layered character not dissimilar to the last several turns by the actress. Cardellini and Bateman are excellent here, balancing their different visages in public and private, while David Harbour remains a major factor in every episode despite his death in the premiere.

Creator and showrunner Steven Conrad wrote and directed the entirety of DTF St. Louis, a series that flies in the face of his more emotionally aspirational screenplays for The Pursuit of Happyness, Wonder, and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Conrad’s small-screen efforts, Patriot, Perpetual Grace, LTD., and Ultra City Smiths, teased some of the darker elements the writer/director had up his sleeve, but DTF St. Louis is a wholly different story that I did not expect from him. There is no rush in any of these episodes, which take their time to develop a creeping sense that something bad is coming, followed by something worse, and it almost always comes to fruition, but not in the way you might expect. There is a quirkiness to this series that feels authentic yet slightly off from reality, without ever venturing too far into anything that feels unrealistic. It is a strange balance that kept me from laughing out loud at the bizarreness of this story, and yet I could not stop watching. Jason Bateman, who has been on a creative roll as a director and producer, lends his support behind the scenes even though he never gets behind the camera.

DTF St. Louis is not the series I expected from the trailer, but it is also a perfect example of the under-the-radar brilliance HBO brings to the screen. Similar to The Chair Company, DTF St. Louis has the potential to be a breakout pop culture hit, and with each chapter creating a twistier and stranger mystery, I cannot wait to see where the story ends up. Because I am basing this review on the first four episodes, I am with you all in not knowing how this story will end, but Steven Conrad kept me laughing and nervous for four consecutive episodes, and I have no doubts it will continue through the final three. Jason Bateman, Linda Cardellini, and David Harbour are a perfect trio that somehow make DTF St. Louis the most uncomfortably sexy comedy series of all time.

DTF St. Louis airs Sundays on HBO.