![]() This exposes, though, an entire problem with this project. A third level of generational bonding is somewhat undone by the decision to have Jean Smart, as Debra’s ultra-religious mom, hidden beneath what much have been categorized as “’70s Grandma” in the wig department.ĭirty John is getting a more traditional unscripted TV treatment on Bravo’s sister network Oxygen in January, and I’d imagine that will basically be the podcast with pictures. The relationship between the sisters and with their mother is the most complicated part of the series, providing a rich history of trust and distrust that I wish the rest of the series could live up to. Temple’s character, a designer bag-collecting Nancy Drew, adds some humor to the series and Garner adds yet another entry to her scene-stealing portfolio and I can’t wait to see how she handles the rest of the story’s arc. I can imagine some people saying that Temple and Garner are playing flighty caricatures when, once you’ve heard the real daughters, they’re both eerily on-point and rather spectacular. ![]() My favorite part of the series thus far is the one that may require the most knowledge of the source material. Through three episodes we also haven’t seen Bana go full Dirty John, but he plays John’s sympathetic guise well and in the character’s chillier moments - all taken directly from the reported record - he’s got a scary intensity that won’t surprise Chopper or Munich fans. Of course, the Dirty John screeners stopped before the point at which the podcast became frustrating and repetitious for me and I wonder if the downward half of the story, one that left some listeners perplexed at Debra’s motivations, will track as well with this more capable interpretation of the character. Once the story has gone from “true” to “based on true,” it’s better to evolve the material dramatically to suit the strength of the medium, since every iteration past the black-and-white of a print story adds its own contrivances and each contrivance runs the risk of making the story more conventional.īecause nobody was willing to take any aesthetic risks in attacking this story, the selling point for Dirty John as a TV series is the casting and even then you have to debate if it’s actually a good thing that the assembled actors are “better than the real thing.” Britton exudes vulnerability and more than in the articles or podcasts, she’s able to foreground Debra’s intelligence and make her romantic misstep feel like something other than misguided neediness. The changes Cunningham has made to the real story are cosmetic - Debra’s eldest daughter is actually named Jacquelyn, while Terra’s unhealthy fascination with The Walking Dead, utterly essential to the arc of the story, has just become a more generic fascination with the idea of a zombie apocalypse - and my instinct is that they probably should have been more widespread. This will prove to be a bad idea, because John is a dangerous con man and he’s about to turn Debra’s life upside down. Sure, the red flags with John begin popping up before the end of their first date and sure, Debra’s daughters immediately distrust the man their mother has quickly become involved with, but John listens and seems to understand when he’s made mistakes and Debra appreciates that. ![]() Despairing at the type of men she’s finding on dating apps, Debra latches onto the apparent candor of John Meehan ( Eric Bana), an anesthesiologist who makes her laugh. In business, Debra has been wildly successful, allowing her to raise her daughters (Juno Temple’s Veronica and Julia Garner’s Terra) in superficial opulence, but she has been less successful in love, with four failed marriages. Connie Britton plays Debra Newell, a Southern California interior designer. Through the first three Dirty John episodes, Alexandra Cunningham has transferred Christopher Goffard’s reporting fairly literally. In its place, I can’t point to much insight or advantage added by the new medium. This isn’t to say that Bravo’s limited series adaptation of the Los Angeles Times podcast (and article series) Dirty John is awful, just that in the transition from “I can’t believe that’s real!” source material to “Aren’t Tami Taylor and the Incredible Hulk giving solid performances?” some of the essential vitality and veracity of the material has been lost.
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