3 out of 5

Created by: Jennifer Cacicio

As I tend not to watch documentaries, my main consumption of “true” tales – beyond whatever I absorb through general exposure – is through podcasts, or fictionalizations. And, being a modern type, I of course have my preferences of particular story tellers / crafters or production companies or etc. which guides what I end up learning more about.

Keith Jesperson, The Happy Face killer, has certainly featured in my bingo card of serial killer lore, but I was mostly unaware of his daughter’s later appearances on Dr. Phil and other TV shows, discussing her upbringing, as well as her 2021 podcast which (alongside an autobiography) served as the inspiration for Paramount+’s “Happy Face” show, starring Annaleigh Ashford as Melissa – Keith’s daughter – and sets up a proxy for Dr. Phil as a means of studying what happens when you’re outed as being related to notoriety.

That’s not uninteresting, but I’ll admit I was mainly sold on checking this out due to, mainly, production by Michelle and Robert King of The Good Wife / …Fight / Evil and so on. Their marks are on the opening titles and some of (I’d guess) the casting, but otherwise, I’ll warn there’s not much tonal tying to their other works, and Happy Face suffers from what many such fictionalized real-life dramas do: in trying to structure reality for episodic viewing, some stuff gets overblown and undercooked and a very potentially rich concept – the aforementioned study of Melissa’s life in an ongoing aftermath of realizations and revelations about your family and upbringing – gets cheapened. There are some great performances here from Ashford, and Dennis Quaid as Jesperson; as per that cheapening, though, we also get some good actors stuffed into ill-fitting boxes for subplots, and some bits and bobs that just don’t add much to the story beyond faux cliffhangers.

At its outset, though, the build and release to Michelle being coerced into talking about her past on “Dr. Greg” (David Harewood) is gripping stuff, the Greg character pitched in very King-y way of toeing the line of parody – clearly this is all just a bid for rating – but reeled in such that we can understand how / why Michelle goes through with it. And when Jesperson uses this renewed line of contact to start confessing to other crimes, the show’s transition to a legal thriller is solid, with Michelle and a Dr. Greg producer, Ivy (Tamera Tomakili) teaming up to prove that Jesperson is claiming responsibility for a murder for which a different, innocent man has been incarcerated. Juggling this with the publicity’s impact on Michelle’s family is where some scripting cracks start to show, and this would arguably be the richer focus for the show… but it’s lacking in some big payoffs and so moves in fits and spurts. Not uninteresting ones, but a bit more transparently TV clunky. Then, when the legal stuff is subjected to twists and turns (even if those are / were factual), we start to get into filler territory. Unfortunately, rounding the curve into the season’s latter half, a lot of the tension and sharpness of the initial episodes has worn off – we’re fully in TV drama land, with tearful, music-laden sequences and faux ante-ups of thrills.

I sincerely appreciate that Happy Face’s overall focus is not on showcasing Jesperson’s crimes: Quaid brings some unique humanity to the role, without sidestepping the person he’s portraying’s criminality, and Ashford – as long as the script gives her less cliche material with which to work – does an amazing job of portraying (in this telling’s context) Michelle’s struggles. But, alas, we’re still shaving down the blurry non-edges of reality to fit an eight episode season, and the show ultimately resembles typified versions of that format.