Elizabeth Olsen Limited Series ‘Love & Death’ Is Well-Made, but We’ve Seen It Before: TV Review

variety.com:

Alison Herman TV Critic “Love & Death” feels familiar, as it should. The Max drama is the second series in less than a year to take on the same story: the case of Candy Montgomery, a Texas housewife who killed her friend and neighbor Betty Gore with an ax in 1980.

This version follows closely on the heels of “Candy,” which aired on Hulu last year. The proximity practically demands comparison, and it’s tempting to draw up a laundry list of differences and call it a review. “Love & Death” casts Elizabeth Olsen as Montgomery, while “Candy” stars Jessica Biel. (The more jarring contrast is between the former’s Jesse Plemons and the latter’s Pablo Schreiber, two physically opposite actors who both assume the role of Allan Gore, Betty’s husband and Candy’s ex-lover.) “Candy” is inflected with horror, while “Love & Death” is more naturalist. “Candy” flashes back from the day of the murder, which saw Montgomery toggle from brutal homicide to eerily banal errands, while “Love & Death” is more linear in structure.

The effect is not unlike that of 2019’s competing documentaries about the viral quagmire known as Fyre Festival, with the same details refracted through distinct sensibilities.

But instead of racing to cover a recent event, these shows converge on a tragedy more than four decades old. The existence of two Candy Montgomery miniseries speaks less to their relative merits than to the exhaustive, exhausting reach of the ongoing true-crime boom. “Love & Death” is only the latest limited series to translate the genre into the language of prestige television, joining peers like “The Staircase,” “Under the Banner of Heaven,” “The Act” and “The Girl From Plainville.” Timing and subject matter have conspired to make “Love &