It’s hard to watch characters as aggressively inconsistent and generally stupid as Ava and Nathan Bartlett for a whole season. The two leads of Craig Rosenberg’s new Peacock thriller/comedy make dumb decision after dumb decision, and most of them, well, don’t ring true. The show may be called “Based on a True Story,” but it’s a strikingly false venture, a toothless mocking of true-crime obsession with nothing to say about the success of shows like “My Favorite Murder” and “Crime Junkie” beyond their existence. Stars Kaley Cuoco and Chris Messina are talented enough to sell a good line every now and then, but the plotting here falls apart under even the slightest scrutiny, and the whole thing just isn’t funny enough to pull its target audience away from their favorite podcasts.
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Ava Bartlett (Cuoco) is a pregnant Los Angeles realtor who’s struggling to sell the McMansions that would net her the best commissions. For some reason, Ava’s only real client is a handsome young man (Alex Alomar Akpobome) whom Ava fantasizes about having sex with roughly once an episode. When it’s not focused on murder, “Based on a True Story” has a weird obsession with the fantasy lives of its leads, suggesting that grown men and women are really just sitting around dreaming about the sexy people that happen to be in their social circles. It’s like someone suggested that a show about true-crime needed a heavy dose of “Sex and the City” to stand out, but the two halves of this show never blend. In fact, they do the opposite in that Ava will find herself in a predicament that should dominate almost every waking thought, and yet she’s still obsessed with her hot client and the fact that all of her female friends are having affairs. It makes her even more shallow than the writers probably intend.
Of course, the same is true of Ava’s husband Nathan (Messina), who used to be a tennis champion but has now been demoted at the club he’s worked at since an injury derailed his promising career. When he’s not watching old clips of his prime, he’s dreaming about living as daring a life as Ava’s BFF Ruby (Priscilla Quintana), who has an open marriage with her husband and a sex life that she loves to talk about or getting all tingly when a cute bartender named Chloe (Natalia Dyer) flirts with him. The character of Ava’s sister Tory (Liana Liberato) is also reduced to her being able to randomly hook up in ways that Ava and Nathan cannot. Everyone on this show is horny or miserable all the time.
Except for Matt Pierce (Tom Bateman). He seems happy enough in a city of miserable people. When Nathan needs a plumber, he meets Matt, and the two become quick friends, hanging out at the bar at which Chloe is employed. While they’re bro-ing out, a mysterious figure known as the West Side Ripper is stalking Los Angeles, brutally murdering young women. After Nathan discovers something about the Ripper’s identity, he essentially goes into the true-crime podcast business with Ava and Matt to capitalize on the knowledge instead of turning him in.
Critics aren’t supposed to spoil but let’s just that Nathan and Ava have the dumbest idea ever, one that would put them in danger and everyone they know and love. It’s not just morally but legally dubious, and Rosenberg and his team never close the deal in terms of making it seem like a believable choice that grown adults would make. It’s trying to be a dark commentary on true-crime culture that suggests that podcasters are just as dangerous as the subjects they profile in how they elevate sociopathic behavior, but to land that idea, Ava and Nathan need to be vicious capitalists, characters that the writers are willing to allow us to judge. As is, they’re just bumbling, horny idiots because no one here takes the pitch-black ideas at play seriously enough.
If the writers wanted to go so broad with this idea that the show became satire, that might have worked too, but they’re never surreal or playful enough with their tone, often incorporating real things like Crime-Con—a Las Vegas event for true crime fans—or tidbits about actual serial killers. They want viewers to believe that this insane scheme would unfold in the real world, and it never comes across as remotely genuine, in part because the Bartletts and Matt have to keep making irrational decisions to keep the plot in motion.
To be fair, none of the cast here is to blame even if Bateman struggles to find an identity for Matt because the writers don’t really know how to define him as more than a catalyst for the Bartletts. The leads are better, although they don’t ever really come off as a believable couple in terms of chemistry, which is a problem in a show that’s built on how their marriage is struggling so much that they are willing to do increasingly irrational things to save it (when they’re not having sex dreams). The supporting ensemble has some fun turns in it, including strong work from Quintana, who at least gives the show a spark a few times when it desperately needs it.
That spark is missing through way too much of “Based on a True Story,” a show with episodes that bizarrely get shorter and shorter as the season progresses. The premiere has enough going on to push 40 minutes and some are near 30 in the middle, but the last couple barely limp across the 22-minute line. It’s as if the writers themselves are getting bored with their own ideas as they limp to a cliffhanger that the season doesn’t earn. The truth? No one can blame them. [D+]
“Based on a True Story” debuts on Peacock on June 8.