The suburban malaise subgenre of murder mystery is thriving, from “Big Little Lies” to “All Her Fault.” At first glance, HBO’s limited series “DTF St. Louis” resides among those tree-lined streets, insidious rot lurking beneath manicured lawns. But creator Steven Conrad and star-executive producer David Harbour have distinctly different aims, including truth and beauty. Just not the truth and beauty one might expect.
“We set up a lot of ‘ballistics’ early on,” says Harbour. “We give you a [death], an app with a lot of deviancy; we give you that it’s going to be about sex. Then Steve pays them off in ways that do not satisfy your lurid expectations; in a way that is beautiful.”
“DTF” finds TV weatherman Clark (Jason Bateman) befriending underemployed American Sign Language interpreter Floyd (Harbour) and his accounting clerk/Little League umpire wife Carol (Linda Cardellini). Each has a ravenous need, the pursuits of which lead to a complex entanglement ending in one’s death. The show explores middle-age desperation, loneliness and, notably, masculinity and male friendship. With a light, humanistic touch, it delves into kinks without shaming, asserting that “No one’s normal. It just looks like that from across the street.”
The characters are “trying to find some emotional light switch,” says Conrad. “Floyd was contending with very heavy-duty depression and found some joy and a measure of peace that summer … One of the feats of David’s performance is to be lovely and soulful, but also to have this heaviness, this mounting despair.”
The nonlinear narrative structure seduces viewers into filling in the blanks themselves — as Conrad puts it, one looks for a bad guy — but “DTF” is a twisty crime drama with no villains.
“Steve loves his characters beyond many other writers I’ve met. He invests them with so much humanity,” says Harbour. “What he gives you is a somewhat depressing reality, but [also] the truth of human beings — some of which is beautiful, some of which is heartbreaking.”
The project originated with Harbour taking a New Yorker true-crime article about a fatal suburban love triangle to producer Todd Black, who brought in Conrad: “We started working on this piece about a murder, some sexual dysfunction, a threesome,” says the actor. “Then we discarded [the real-life story] and it really took off.”
Conrad says, “I didn’t know any of the subjects of that piece; they weren’t at my disposal. I would have been just guessing, and that’s a bad place for any writer to be.” He chose instead to rely on his imagination, and what some of his friends were experiencing. “I thought, I ought to feel confident that if I come up with something, that it really is a natural impulse, natural appetite, of a person I can count on having really told me the truth.”
Harbour credits Conrad with crafting the show’s idiosyncrasies, including the use of recumbent bikes: “All the stuff that made me howl with laughter, that were such interesting solves for this murder mystery. I loved the ASL; I loved the Playgirl thing.”
Floyd had once been a nude model. Now he could only look back sadly on those pages, the years not having been kind.
“He used to be a very physical person, then he gets this Peyronie’s situation [a condition that causes uncomfortable curvature of the erect penis], he gains weight. But he also gets ASL. ASL is a form of love for him. It’s his most passionate form of expression. It’s beautifully written that it’s something physical.”
Conrad says, “If this were a mathematical equation, a guy in poor health, in poor economic circumstances, challenged by raising a stepson, you wouldn’t think that would equal exhilarating. But David made Floyd exhilarating.
“You wonder, ‘Are people gonna love Floyd the way he deserves?’ He’s a little too gentle to be on planet Earth. His fate isn’t a reward; it’s a punishment.
“David’s first scene was the therapy scene, warning his stepson against the possible fate of one day getting ‘grown-up Cs.’ And all ‘grown-up Cs’ meant to him was, ‘I’m worried you won’t have people around you who appreciate how great you are.’ And that’s Floyd’s fate.”
None of the relationships in “DTF” are quite what they seem, including between struggling Floyd and local celebrity Clark.
“Jason really makes Floyd the alpha in their relationship,” says Harbour of how Bateman’s approach “teed him up.” “It’s like Floyd is the greatest thing Clark’s ever met. A less sophisticated actor might not do that. That choice launched a chemistry between us that was very special.”
Cardellini’s Carol is a pitch-perfect femme fatale. Except when she’s not. Sometimes she’s a scrambling mom with a troubled kid; sometimes she’s an awkward umpire learning on the job; sometimes she’s just yearning.
“She has an incredible tightrope to walk,” says Harbour. “She can be sort of mean, and we don’t like her in the beginning. As the series grows, you really feel for her. That’s so hard to pull off, and she does it in spades.”
It added up to something of which Harbour is deeply proud.
“It is exciting to know you’re in something you’re gonna love to watch,” he says. “It feels different, it feels special. [‘DTF’] pushes boundaries and, in that way, gets further at the truth than cliche.”
When it’s pointed out he once jokingly named his “Stranger Things” character, Hopper, “the greatest role ever written,” he and his director burst out laughing.
“You can stick to your guns on that,” says Conrad. “I like Hopper too.”
“No way, man! Floyd Smernitch!”
Conrad refers to one of the revelations of Floyd’s hidden abilities: “Can Hopper do the pommel horse?”
“No f— way, man!”
Conrad leans in confidentially: “I have been asked if that’s really Dave doing the pommel horse, and my answer is, ‘I don’t know. It’s really dark back there; it’s hard to see …’ ”
Harbour falls backward laughing: “That’s my director, there! Takin’ care of me!”
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