DTF St. Louis is the dark-comedy murder mystery that walked away with seven Emmys for a reason

📺 Most TV protagonists are young and full of verve — that’s not the case for the leads of DTF St. Louis. A dark-comedy miniseries created by Steven Conrad (Wonder, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty) and starring Jason Bateman, David Harbour, and Linda Cardellini, DTF St. Louis is not your average murder mystery. The seven-parter premiered earlier this year and went on to snag seven Emmys at the 78th Primetime Awards, including Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, with both Harbour and Cardellini taking home acting awards.

The plot: Clark Forrest (Bateman) is a local TV weatherman. Floyd Smernitch (Harbour) is his ASL interpreter and bestie. Both are married, and both are seemingly stuck in their lives. Look inward and fix their marriage? Nope. Cheat? Yes — but the consequences soon follow. When Clark discovers DTF St. Louis, a hookup app aimed at married people looking for no-strings-attached arrangements, he proposes they give it a try. A few weeks later, Floyd turns up dead in a swimming pool changing room. Whoops. It’s soon revealed that not all is as it seems, with each character harboring their own secrets. One investigator (Joy Sunday) tries to make sense of it all.

What we liked and didn’t — bundled into one: The protagonists are immature and, at times, juvenile. However, the show uses its offbeat humor to establish just how stuck these characters are. Clark and Floyd are both lost in their own ways, searching for connection and meaning while feeling unsexy, unloved, and at a dead end. Underneath the dark-comedy scaffolding, there’s vulnerability, and it creeps up on you. The central themes — friendship, connection, the desire to tap back into something playful and alive in middle age — are what DTF St. Louis is really about, and they land.

The verdict: DTF St. Louis is a slow burn, and you have to meet it on its own terms. Stick with the juvenile humor long enough, and the characters bloom into something genuinely moving.

WHERE TO WATCH- DTF St. Louis is streaming on OSN+. Watch the trailer on YouTube (watch, runtime: 2:36).