Perhaps, like politicians’ careers, all intellectual property must eventually end in failure. You begin in one medium – a viral video on social media, perhaps, which brings your story to the attention of the masses and the makers of a podcast; then on to a streamed drama or documentary, maybe knocking out a book on the subject as you go. But eventually it hits a wall. The new translation doesn’t work, it’s running on empty, it doesn’t capture interest, the moment has passed. People get bored, they move on, and that’s the end of your IP’s journey.
The new true-crime drama Happy Face, created by Jennifer Cacicio and executive-produced by the mighty Robert and Michelle King (The Good Wife, The Good Fight, Evil, Elsbeth), began life as a book – Shattered Silence, the 2009 autobiography of Melissa Moore, in which she recounted her experience as the daughter of the serial murderer Keith Hunter Jesperson. He was known as the Happy Face Killer, because of the smiley doodles he drew on numerous attention-seeking letters to the media and authorities during his years of murdering at least eight women. He is serving a life sentence in Oregon state penitentiary.
Moore appeared in an episode of the true-crime series Evil Lives Here, followed shortly after by a 12-part podcast about her father’s crimes and her childhood. Now, we have an eight-part “inspired by” dramatisation, which keeps the basic facts the same, but adds in fictional elements so the viewer never knows quite what is true and what isn’t, and therefore how shocked or invested to be at any point. It makes for an unsatisfactory experience even before you take into account the lacklustre script, flat performances and wild tonal variations, let alone address the queasy question of how much the genre generally, and this specifically, is exploiting the grief of victims’ families.
Annaleigh Ashford gives a charisma-free performance as Moore, who is written as a blandly saintly survivor, racked with guilt about not doing more to stop her father and now seeking – via an apparently invented subplot – to atone for her perceived sins. James Wolk does the best he can with the little available to him in the role of Ben, Melissa’s almost equally saintly husband. There is a teenage daughter who goes off the rails when she discovers who her grandad is (shoplifting, joining the wrong crowd and secretly contacting him in prison). And then there’s Dennis Quaid as Jesperson, whose innate edgy vibe could have been harnessed to great effect, but who instead slips into grinning caricature. He isn’t helped by the eternally one-note script.
Moore is working as a makeup artist on the therapy talkshow Dr Greg (played by an uncharacteristically over-the-top David Harewood) when Jesperson gets in touch to say that he will confess to killing a ninth woman, Heather (Leah Jacksties) – but only to his daughter and only in person. For a moment, it looks as if Happy Face is about to right itself and become an interrogation of our era’s increasingly unhealthy obsession with true crime and our willingness to overlook exploitation of the vulnerable in pursuit of the next vicarious thrill. Dr Greg and his producer, Ivy (Tamera Tomakili), press Moore into contacting her father and appearing on the show to “out” herself as the killer’s child.
But this hope, despite everything the Kings did to capture the vagaries of the US legal system with The Good Wife and The Good Fight, is not realised. The disappointment recurs when Ivy and Melissa discover that Heather’s boyfriend, a young Black man, Elijah (played by Damon Gupton), is weeks away from the death penalty in Texas for her murder, despite an absence of evidence. This is ripe for an examination of systemic racism and corruption, but this is not fulfilled.
Although it becomes a little more consistent in the second half, Happy Face remains a weirdly soapy, at times saccharine, evocation of triumph over trauma and the mawkish celebration of the courage of victims and the survivors of terrible violence that patronises rather than honours them. The whole thing feels tired, shoddy and half-baked. But maybe Jesperson will enjoy the further attention it will bring him. Something to help break the monotony in prison. Smiley face.
