In a television in which true crime has become a genre as everyday as taking a shower, the creators are looking for it and want to stand out in some way with their proposal. I’m not sure the move went quite right for them with ‘Candy. Murder in Texas’a miniseries that Disney + premieres today, but it is a commendable attempt.
Based on real events, Nick Antosca (‘The Act’) and Robin Veith (‘The Expanse’), investigates the bloody death of Betty Gore, hacked to death by Candy Montgomery in suburban Texas in the 1980s. In the cast we have Jessica Biel (‘The Sinner’) like the latter and Melanie Lynskeythat although it has never stopped is having a new resurgence with series like ‘Yellowjackets’, as the victim.
Composed of five episodes, ‘Candy’ takes us to a brown world, of suburban houses, of unsatisfied lives. One Friday, July 13, 1980, a woman goes to another’s house, supposedly to pick up her daughter’s swimsuit. The next time we see Candy we see her bloodied, taking a shower. The first episode does not show the crime, but works on that atmosphere of suspicion, of fatality, that something has happened.
It will be, from the second episode, when the miniseries investigates the motive for the crime, in the relationship between Candy and Betty and what has really led to killing each other. This is going to ask us for a lot of patience, not only because of the calm rhythm, but also because it is preferred to peel the layers little by little.
simmering layers
This is added to a desire, on the part of Robin Veith, to delve into social relationships in the Texas suburbana, more specifically among parishioners of the local church. Through the eyes of the protagonists, this “ideal” life translates into an unstimulating routine, a dissatisfied family and even some existential emptiness.
The problem is that, although they manage to fully convey this tedium in which the characters live, they do it a bit at the expense of entertainment. The series borders the limit between the suggestive and the slightly bland. The interesting thing about the case and the personality of both one and the other are diluted in that tone as dark as it is calm.
The great asset of ‘Candy’ lies precisely in that leading duo. Both Jessica Biel and Melanie Lynskey are brilliant as Candy and Betty respectively. These take their respective roles and tame them in such a way that they manage to lift a series that becomes somewhat heavy at times.
It’s not so much that I fall (also a little) in the insistence of concepts that have already become clear to the viewer, but is handled in a parsimoniously unnerving style. This causes, among other issues, that the theses proposed by Antosca and Veith in the exploration of murderer and victim do not come to fruition.
There’s nothing wrong with doing “simmer” series (Veith, himself, comes from the ‘Mad Men’ school), but you always have to be careful of producing fatigue. And this miniseries does. In short, the biggest problem with ‘Candy’ is that, although manages to be stimulating and attractive, fails to hold attention for too long.