Things we’re watching — Netflix true crime series Dirty John, starring Eric Bana, about the disturbing true-lifte story of John Meehan. Via the Sydney Morning Herald:
In any case, it’s a horrifying true story based on a series of articles and a podcast by Los Angeles Times reporter Christopher Goffard. Britton plays Debra Newell, a successful interior designer who has been signally unsuccessful in love – having no fewer than four ex-husbands.
Debra wants to find love again, and nobody who’s seen Nashville could begrudge a Connie Britton character such a reasonable dream any more than they could begrudge a great, sad-eyed golden retriever an extra Schmacko.
After a montage of excruciating dates in which series creator Alexandra Cunningham (Aquarius, Desperate Housewives) and director Jeffrey Reiner (Friday Night Lights, The Affair) establish immense sympathy for Debra, her luck seems to change.
She meets a fellow by the name of John (Bana), a doctor who turns up for their dream date oddly underdressed but proves solicitious and charming – and has even risked his neck with Médecins Sans Frontières in the Middle East. Debra is smitten, but her hostile, bratty adult daughter (Juno Temple, effortlessly irritating and amusing) smells a rat. What follows in the first half of the eight-part series is never terribly surprising, and it’s certainly hard to imagine anyone who knows the story staying the whole way through.