The Midwest is usually associated with uncomplicated kindness—nice, polite people who like college football, a cold beer, and (recent events in Minnesota notwithstanding) treating their neighbors with dignity and respect. But as an oft repeated phrase on Steven Conrad’s new HBO show warns, there’s more to Midwesterners than meets the eye.
“No one’s normal,” says Conrad, Zooming in from California. “It just looks that way from across the street.”
In the HBO limited series DTF St. Louis, Conrad explores the darkness just beyond a Midwestern city’s white picket fences. The seven-episode dark comedy stars Emmy favorites Jason Bateman, David Harbour, and Linda Cardellini as three middle-aged St. Louis residents grappling with ennui, loneliness, and hidden desires, becoming enmeshed in a love triangle that leaves one of them dead.
As a writer, Conrad—who sold his first screenplay at the age of 19—has always been interested in messiness. “[There’s] a set of themes I’ve liked since I was a young person learning how to write: You watch somebody you like make a mistake, and you watch them try to make up for it,” he says. “You cheer for them to be able to do that. But like most of the consequential mistakes in our life, there really is no complete way to make it all better again.”
Conrad doubles down on that central theme in DTF St. Louis, creating a series that explores how our mistakes—and desires—only compound with age. “The older I got, it occurred to me that we keep making them. There are plenty of middle-aged mistakes,” he says.
Bateman—also an executive producer on the series—was the perfect vessel to convey these ideas. He stars in the show as Clark Forrest, a hot weatherman and a micro-celebrity in the greater St. Louis area. While reporting on a storm, he’s paired with a good-hearted yet simple ASL interpreter named Floyd, played by Harbour. An unlikely friendship between the two blossoms, leading Clark to meet Floyd’s wife, Cardellini’s Carol—a previously single mother struggling to support a troubled tweenage-year-old son and an under-employed husband. The also-married Clark introduces Floyd to a new app called DTF St. Louis, made for singles and swingers looking to spice up their marriages. After a few fateful swipes, everyone’s lives begin to change.
“We show some billboards for DTF St. Louis, and their log line is, ‘All of the excitement, none of the consequences,’” Conrad tells me. “A smart person would know that that’s impossible.”
Chris Murphy
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