It is both an ineffective sales pitch and generally accurate to call “DTF St. Louis” the unsexiest erotic thriller ever made. The HBO limited series, all seven episodes of which were written and directed by “Patriot” creator Steven Conrad, combines sex, murder and betrayal in the entanglements between Clark (Jason Bateman), his new friend Floyd (David Harbour) and Floyd’s wife Carol (Linda Cardellini). But “DTF St. Louis” sets this story against an exquisitely banal backdrop to uncanny, off-kilter and ultimately hilarious effect.
The series’ first image is of Clark, a local weatherman, commuting to work on his recumbent bike, as dorky a mode of transportation as has ever been invented. Brands like Purina (where Carol works in the corporate office), Outback Steakhouse (where Clark and Floyd go on their first friend date) and Jamba Juice (where Clark gets his daily Go-Getter smoothie for an afternoon pick-me-up) are invoked to set the tone. St. Louis itself — though our heroes actually live in the fictional suburb of Twyla — is seemingly selected for its total lack of glamor or noirish allure.
“DTF St. Louis” is the second HBO series in six months, after Tim Robinson’s “The Chair Company,” to heighten the bland normality of suburban life into a staging ground for absurdist humor with its own distinct cadence. In fact, an early entry in my notes reads “Tim Robinson but quiet” — there’s a Robinsonian rhythm to simple, quirkily phrased lines of dialogue like “You want my dreams, at the Quality Garden Suites?” But Conrad’s characters aren’t loud, blustering oafs designed to explore masculine bravado, even if that’s part of what’s going on here; when Clark and Floyd, an on-air ASL interpreter, meet while covering a cyclone, the ensuing bromance has shades of “Step Brothers.” The central trio are mild-mannered people in economic and spiritual malaise of the sort that drives Clark and Carol to strike up an affair, and leads Floyd to wind up dead by a poisoned (and canned) Bloody Mary.
