Jason Bateman and David Harbour in 'DTF St. Louis.' HBO Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment Logo text Following in the esoteric footsteps of the folk singing espionage of Amazon's Patriot, the noir musical puppetry of AMC+'s Ultra City Smiths and whatever mysterious cult-y thing was happening in MGM+'s (then-Epix's) Perpetual Grace, LTD, HBO's DTF St. Louis is probably creator Steven Conrad's most accessible and easily describable television project to date. The tricky part, though, is that the series I'm about to describe for you isn't the series that DTF St. Louis actually is - which will probably tick off the viewers who've watched the trailer and tuned in for something tawdry and outrageous, and leave out the viewers who would respond well to the truly odd, but also emotionally raw suburban melodrama it seems to be by midseason. Related Stories TV David Harbour Has a New Dark Comedy About Swingers and "Weird People Looking for Meaning" THR Digital Cover The Nine Lives of Jason Bateman DTF St. Louis The Bottom Line Coarse and semi-funny, then sentimental and semi-moving. Airdate: 9 p.m. Sunday, March 1 (HBO)Cast: Jason Bateman, David Harbour, Linda Cardellini, Richard Jenkins, Joy Sunday, Arlan Ruf, Peter Sarsgaard, Chris PerfettiCreator: Steven Conrad And the problem with that is that critics have been sent only four out of seven episodes and, as much as I hate the hoary cliché, there are absolutely two wolves inside of DTF St. Louis. One is cynical and snarky, with a sour-to-the-point-of-curdled view of humanity, and the other has a heart full of sentiment, drunk to the point of passing out on the milk of human kindness. These are the two wolves inside Conrad's other TV and film projects as well, and he's at his best when neither wolf triumphs entirely. Which presents the challenge of reviewing DTF St. Louis. I was interested that it wasn't the show it initially presents itself as, and I found something satisfying about the fourth episode, which almost could have functioned as a finale. But there aren't three additional episodes' worth of puzzles left to be solved, and almost all of the paths I can imagine filling out the time are frustrating in different ways - leaving me positive-ish about what I've seen, but politely skeptical about the prognosis from here. The sniggering and somewhat puerile tone suggested by the title is a, if not the, predominant tone of the first episode or two of the series, which is wholly written and directed by Conrad. Jason Bateman plays Clark Forrest, star weatherman for a big St. Louis station. Most of our sense of Clark as a character is determined by our assumptions about weathermen, a profession that Conrad finds fascinating mostly in symbolic, rather than practical, terms. In a chaotic and unpredictable world, somebody with artificially TV-friendly looks stands in front of a map that isn't there and attempts to prognosticate the unknowable future. And unlike carnival fortune teller, this is a celebrated profession, to be placed on billboards that tower over the city. One day, Clark, who rides his recumbent bike into the city, is reporting on a cyclone when he nearly gets decapitated by a flying stop sign. He's saved by Floyd (David Harbour), the station's new ASL translator. Floyd, who only started learning ASL a year earlier and isn't deaf or hard of hearing but does have an abnormally curved penis thanks to Peyronie's disease, is an affectionate teddy bear of a man, struggling to relate to his stepson Richard (Arlan Ruf) and looking to rekindle the spark with his wife, Carol (Linda Cardellini) amid financial instability. Clark and his wife Eimy (Wynn Everett, in a role whose underwriting has me perplexed thus far) come over to Floyd's house for BBQ and cornhole, and there are clear sparks between Clark and Carol. Some time later, Clark is telling Floyd about a new app called DTF St. Louis, for married people looking for a little extramarital sex. Clark is having an affair with Carol. And soon, Floyd is dead. That, incidentally, is not a spoiler. It happens in the first 10 or 15 minutes of the pilot. The investigation into the death is conducted by Donoghue Homer (Richard Jenkins), a detective of the St. Louis County Sheriff's Office, in awkward jurisdictional consort with Jodie Plumb (Joy Sunday), an officer with the special crimes unit in their St. Louis suburb. It also is not an indication on how much Harbour appears in the series. He's here plenty. Conrad likes telling stories that are temporally fragmented, introducing a narrative in the present tense and then jumping back to many different points in the past without obvious hand-holding on when in the timeline we are or which pieces of the established story are about to get fleshed out or, as is the case here, which part