The Thing About Pam Review: Renée Zellweger Is Entertainingly Evil in Uneven True Crime Limited Series
Renée Zellweger, The Factor About Pam Skip Bolen/NBC The Factor About Pam, NBC’s new six-episode restricted drama sequence concerning the weird case of Pam Hupp, is clearly closely influenced by Fargo. Hupp, a convicted assassin from Missouri whose unbelievable story was the topic of a preferred 2019 true crime podcast additionally known as The Factor About…
The Factor About Pam, NBC’s new six-episode restricted drama sequence concerning the weird case of Pam Hupp, is clearly closely influenced by Fargo. Hupp, a convicted assassin from Missouri whose unbelievable story was the topic of a preferred 2019 true crime podcast additionally known as The Factor About Pam, is a personality straight out of a Coen Brothers film, a grasping Midwestern sociopath whose outward ordinariness hides a diabolical nature. She’s performed by Renée Zellweger in prosthetic make-up and, controversially, a “fats go well with.” The present has an ironic, indifferent tone and performs as a grotesque darkish comedy about dimwitted criminals and incompetent legislation enforcement.
As I discussed, it feels greater than anything like Fargo, Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1996 crime dramedy masterpiece. However Fargo solely claimed to be a real story. The Factor About Pam is about actual folks and actual murders that occurred within the latest previous, which makes it a bit laborious to abdomen. When you concentrate on how Betsy Faria was brutally murdered and her husband Russ served three years in jail for a criminal offense he did not commit, the present’s arch tone feels impudent. That being stated, the tone does work when it is being directed on the failures of the justice system that allowed Russ Faria to be convicted and Pam Hupp to not even be a suspect till years later.
If you do not know something concerning the case, which I didn’t earlier than I watched the present, The Factor About Pam earns its authorized thriller construction. It’s a rare story with twists, turns, reversals of fortune, and stunningly dangerous decisions by police and prosecutors. It’ll have you ever googling to search out out if this might actually have occurred — and it did. Simply after Christmas in 2011, Russ Faria (performed by True Detective‘s Glenn Fleshler) got here residence to search out his spouse Betsy (Katy Mixon) useless. He known as 911 and stated she had killed herself. However she had been stabbed 55 instances, together with within the again, and Russ was charged along with her homicide. The police and the district legal professional (Judy Greer) ignored proof that pointed to Betsy’s good friend Pam Hupp, the final particular person to see her alive and offerer of handy proof and testimony implicating Russ, and as of 4 days earlier than the homicide, the beneficiary of Betsy’s life insurance coverage coverage. It is a true story, and that is solely the beginning of how loopy it will get. It was a nationwide information story that was coated on NBC’s true crime establishment Dateline in TV and podcast kind for years, however the story was area of interest sufficient — and twisty sufficient — that I will cease describing it there. It is a information story you don’t need spoiled.
The present was produced by NBC News Studios, a division of NBC Information that makes high-end documentaries in addition to scripted initiatives that adapt NBC Information docs and podcasts, in partnership with Blumhouse Tv, which additionally makes scripted and documentary TV. They took a blended strategy for The Factor About Pam. The present is mainly a fictionalized Dateline episode, that includes full-on Dateline narration by correspondent Keith Morrison, who hosted the podcast. It makes use of a lot of Dateline‘s narrative strategies, like cliffhangers earlier than business breaks, and Morrison’s distinctive folksy/macabre narration. Hardly ever does a real crime documentary beget an leisure adaptation fairly like this, the place it is the identical folks making each. It offers a whole lot of ammo to individuals who accuse the true crime style of exploiting actual ache for leisure.
The Factor About Pam
Like
- A compelling story that is not possible to cease watching
- Robust performances throughout the board
- When the ironic tone works it really works properly
Dislike
- The ironic tone is off-putting at instances
- The hair and make-up is horrible
The present’s droll faux-documentary type is an ideal match for some moments and by no means for others. One of the best components of the present are those that expose the jaw-dropping vanity and incompetence of the overmatched police and district legal professional working the case. The DA, Leah Askey (not her identify in actual life), who’s completely performed with spiteful ineptitude by Judy Greer, is so unwilling to confess that she’s unsuitable about Russell Faria that she’s going to lie, withhold proof, and stack the deck in her favor to get her manner. And the decide (Heather Magee), her former highschool classmate, is in cahoots along with her towards Faria’s protection legal professional Joel Schwartz (a charismatic Josh Duhamel), a metropolis slicker from St. Louis. The issues they do to ensure Russell Faria goes to jail and Pam Hupp doesn’t are so outlandish you must snicker. Faria shouldn’t be laughing, although, and essentially the most emotionally affecting moments of the present are between him and his stepdaughter Mariah (Gideon Adlon), who does not need to imagine that the person she considers her father may have accomplished this to her mom and does not belief her mother’s good friend Pam.
Which brings us to Zellweger’s efficiency. As Pam Hupp, she’s so malicious that she’s hilarious. She’s always slurping from an enormous cup of soda as she manipulates everybody round her. She has a bottomless properly of seething resentment. She desires all of it, and does not need anybody else to have something. Zellweger does not play her as a misunderstood lady pushed by circumstance to do dangerous issues, she performs her as a cartoonishly evil power vampire, which admittedly is a welcome change from true crime diversifications that excuse their prison’s misdeeds (Inventing Anna, to call one latest instance). She’s enjoyable to look at, even when the character is one-dimensional and deliberately annoying. Zellweger has all the time been nice at enjoying villains — Roxie Hart in Chicago is one in every of her signature roles — and it is easy to see why she was drawn to this unconventional femme fatale, even when it’s a complete curveball to observe up an Oscar win (her final position earlier than this was Judy) with a pulpy broadcast present.
The make-up decisions are more durable to grasp. Irrespective of how you are feeling concerning the fraught issue of actresses wearing fat suits, the prosthetics on The Factor About Pam do not move muster. From the cheekbones up, Pam is unmistakably Renée Zellweger. From the nostril down, she appears virtually animatronic. Her plastery prosthetics conjure up reminiscences of White Chicks. Her wig is stiff and apparent. It is so dangerous I virtually puzzled if the screeners I watched had been ready on some digital touch-ups to make the hair and make-up look satisfactory. It isn’t simply Zellweger’s hair and make-up, both — Glenn Fleshler’s wig is so dangerous that it feels prefer it is likely to be on goal. His painted-on hair is a borderline narrative flaw, because it feels just like the present is making enjoyable of and undermining a sympathetic character, particularly early on within the present, when the ironic tone is at its most jarring.
Although The Factor About Pam has vital flaws, it’s compulsively watchable. Each scene ends in a manner that makes you need to maintain watching, and it is paced properly and does not unfold its story out over too many hours. The actual-life story is so gobsmackingly insane that it might be fascinating to look at a present about it even when the performing wasn’t this good. And when the Coen Brothers-inspired tone works, it is deliciously satisfying. However you then keep in mind that this entertainingly stranger-than-fiction story would not exist if harmless folks hadn’t died, and you’re feeling little queasy.
Premieres: Tuesday, March 8 at 10/9c on NBC; Streaming the day after on Peacock
Who’s in it: Renée Zellweger, Josh Duhamel, Judy Greer, Katy Mixon, Glenn Fleshler
Who’s behind it: Jenny Klein (author/showrunner), Scott Winant (director), Renée Zellweger (government producer)
For followers of: True crime — particularly Dateline, film stars in dangerous prosthetic make-up
What number of episodes we watched: 4 out of 6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI0hB7qhx_o
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