So I’ve made no bones about my enthusiasm for the new HBO show DTF St. Louis, starring Jason Bateman, David Harbour, and Linda Cardellini. It’s my favorite series right now and ranks up there with some of the best, including the incomparable Better Call Saul. At about halfway through the season the plot is cooking. Ostensibly the engine powering the plot is the murder mystery: Who killed Floyd Smernitch? And it’s certainly a good mystery: I won’t give away anything but there’s an obvious culprit . . . who is too obvious. I have my theories: Clark Forrest’s wife, Eimy Forrest (played by Wynn Everett) is suspiciously absent from any discussion in this whodunit. She could be a sneaky suspect. But why I say “ostensibly”: The real charm of the series is the writing/acting. Bateman and Harbour get the most airtime of each episode, and both are doing a knockout job. Bateman plays against type, ditching his comic good-guy persona for something more tortured and nebbishy—a local TV weatherman with a penchant for kinky sex. Harbour, on the other hand, is the center of DTF’s universe, the planet around which all the other moon-characters orbit. He’s oddly likable, sloppy, charming, overweight, funny, bumbling, and dynamic. His status as an American Sign Language expert gives him a spritz of quirkiness and compassion. He’s a hero who feels strongly—you could argue too strongly—for others. He’s the most likable character, and from early on in Episode 1 he’s dead. In Episode 5 (there are many flashbacks) he confides in Clark an anecdote to explain how he got a “crooked dick.” It’s laugh-out-loud funny, and mysterious, too. Watch it.
