‘Candy,’ Starring Jessica Biel and Melanie Lynskey, Can’t Quite Keep Its Grip on Gory, Complex True Crime Story: TV Review

variety.com:

Caroline Framke Chief TV CriticHalfway through the final episode of “Candy,” I had to pause to answer the door. I was four and a half hours deep into Hulu’s newest “based on true events” limited series, this time about a suburban friendship that ended in horrifically fatal consequences in 1980.

At this point, I’d become well and truly unnerved by the show’s sinister overtones, deliberately monochromatic palette, and anchoring performances from Jessica Biel (as acquitted murderer Candy Montgomery), Melanie Lynskey (as her neighbor and victim Betty Gore), and Pablo Schreiber (as Betty’s husband, and Candy’s erstwhile lover, Allan).

And yet, 30 seconds after I stopped watching the finale, I’d already forgotten I’d been watching the show at all. To its credit, “Candy” — which debuts May 9 on Hulu and will air each of its five episodes in a row until the finale on May 13 — starts strong.

Written by “Mad Men” alum Robin Veith, the premiere traces the day of, and after, Betty’s death in excruciating detail. It gives the core trio of Biel, Lynskey, and Schreiber ample room to establish their characters and, in the case of the increasingly desperate Allan, react to the tragedy practically in real time.As for the pair of women at the series’ heart: Biel’s much too obviously a 2022 celebrity fit to play a supposedly fragile-looking 1980s housewife, no matter how hard the tight curls of her frumpy wig try to prove otherwise.