Plot: Candy Montgomery is a 1980 housewife and mother who did everything right—good husband, two kids, nice house, even the careful planning and execution of transgressions—but when the pressure of conformity builds within her, her actions scream for just a bit of freedom. With deadly results.
Review: Here we are, back again, with another streaming series adapting a true crime story. Not to sound jaded, but it almost feels like these days we are getting as many tabloid event series as there used to be in the late 1980s and early 1990s when such tales served as fodder for network movies. With bigger casts and better production values, these new series are certainly better acted than decades ago, but not all are created equal. The latest tale to get such treatment is Candy, based on the 1980 crime that has already inspired a 1990 TV movie as well as an upcoming HBO Max series starring Elizabeth Olsen. With a unique release strategy consisting of a new episode each day for the five-episode series, Hulu is banking that this sensational crime with serve as a sensational and buzz-worthy series.
Candy, unlike many recent true-crime series, unfolds in a fairly straightforward manner. The series opens with the day of the crime with the following four episodes chronicling the investigation and trial of Candy Montgomery for the brutal ax murder of Betty Gore. There are flashbacks to the events and situations that lead up to the crime featuring a substantial amount of dramatic license to build the story into a whodunit. By setting up multiple suspects, the viewer is forced to question whether Candy herself was the killer or if it was someone else within the tight community of Wylie, Texas. Could it have been Candy’s husband, Pat (Timothy Simons)? Or maybe Betty’s husband, Allan (Pablo Schrieber)? Both Candy (Jessica Biel) and Betty (Melanie Lynskey) are portrayed as three-dimensional characters and their motivations become more than just a simple case of murderer and victim.
This series hinges on the performances of Biel and Lynskey more than any other member of the cast. Jessica Biel has permanently shed her stereotyped roles from early in her career. As a producer, her work on The Sinner, Limetown, and now Candy proves that bringing solid stories to screen is more important than anything. Biel literally strips herself down to nothing to play this role and makes Candy Montgomery an interesting character to watch. In the first episode alone, I shifted from sympathizing with her character to suspecting her and then back to sympathy again. As the five-episode series unfurls, you also begin to question the victim, Betty Gore, as well. Melanie Lynskey, who rose to fame with an early role in Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, does a stellar job of playing a troubled and somewhat unlikeable character. The two women share a lot in common, even if they don’t realize it, and when Betty meets her unfortunate fate, it opens up the secrets their small town has been hiding under the surface.
The supporting players are also quite good. Timothy Simon, best known for his comedic work on Veep as Jonah Ryan, is convincing as Candy’s sweet but ignorant husband. Pablo Schrieber, who is currently headlining the far different Halo series over on Paramount+, plays Betty’s husband Allan. Schrieber often plays duplicitous roles and I wanted to dislike him here, but the cast is all good at portraying their counterparts as human beings rather than characters. Schrieber makes Allan’s reactions to everything that occurs realistic and dramatic in equal measure. There are also some surprising appearances through the series that folks will be buzzing about when the series finishes airing, but none of Candy ever comes across as sensationalized nor unrealistic. If no one had revealed that this was based on a true story, it would still be every bit as engaging.
As directed by Michael Uppendahl, Jennifer Getzinger, Benjamin Semanoff, and Tara Nicole Weyr, Candy blends the period look of 1980s fashion and pop culture with a stark colored noir mystery drenched in bright colors and deep black shadows. The cinematography of Simon Dennis and Ariel Marx really sets the mood for this series and enhances the work of series creators Robin Veith and Nick Antosca. Veith and Antosca previously collaborated on Hulu’s excellent series The Act to which Candy works as a solid companion piece. Both involve bizarre crimes that take on a different air via a narrative lens. I also appreciate that the series keeps its run to a limited five episodes which make good use of its time without overstaying its welcome. I also highly recommend that if you do not know the real-life outcome of this story, you stay away from looking it up and enjoy this story as it plays out.
There are many parallels between Candy and NBC’s recent (and awful) The Thing About Pam. Both series follow housewives who commit horrible acts and how those around them justify it. The Thing About Pam treats the characters as two-dimensional and silly rather than respecting the truth of what happened. With Candy, the drama never overtakes the material but keeps it moving forward and unfolding over the series. This is a show designed to be watched in short order and I love that there are days in between each premiere that forces the audience to slow down and unpack each hour. While it will work for binge-viewers as well, Candy is best consumed a day at a time. It may not raise the bar on the true-crime series genre, but Candy is a solid entry anchored by one of Jessica Biel’s best performances.
Candy premieres with a new episode each day beginning on May 9th on Hulu.