HBO series “DTF St. Louis”: The deceptive normality

Nobody is normal. That’s just what it looks like from across the street.” The sentence of a minor character becomes a mantra in “DTF St. Louis”. Because nobody is normal here. But what is normal?

The life of weather presenter Clark Forrest (Jason Bateman) and sign language interpreter Floyd Smernitch (David Harbour) looks pretty ordinary at first glance. The two men in their mid-forties live with their wives and children in Twyla, a small suburb of St. Louis in Missouri. And both of them are really keen on sex.

Floyd's problem is that he can no longer get an erection since his wife Carol (Linda Cardellini) works as a children's baseball umpire. The heavily padded and shapeless outfit turns him off.

Clark's problem is that he likes the wife of Floyd - his new best friend. To escape her sex lull, Clark convinces Floyd to sign up for the sex app DTF - short for: Down to fuck.

Shortly afterwards, Floyd is found dead in an empty pool house, next to him is an Indiana Jones porno with a scratched face. And the investigators' search for the murderer is proving more difficult than first thought. Because behind the curtains of the suburban houses things aren't as orderly as they seem from the outside.

Any further detail would be a spoiler and I would like to spare you that. Because “DTF St. Louis” is a rare, yes, a magnificent mixture of genres. Something like a crime thriller, something like a black comedy, something like a suburban drama. In any case, I haven't seen such a loving depiction of a male friendship in a long time, cried so much and laughed so often as I did in this miniseries.

Hardly anything is normal here, everything is weird in the best sense of the word.