Candy

All the performances are solid, but "quiet desperation" is a tough mood to maintain over five episodes — and an oddly sleepy one for a drama about a sensational scandal.

It lands firmly in the camp of good, but not great, and for someone who enjoys mystery novels, this series is probably a good weekend binge, a one and done to be watched while cleaning or with friends.

When "Candy" hits its stride in the second and third episodes, it is because Biel and Lynskey make us feel something for these women and the lack of choices they have in life aside from the roles of wife and mother. ... "Candy" stops sticking with us by its end, closing on a resolution that dissolves into nothing. Fortunately this case will be re-opened in a few months, but its squandered potential is still frustrating.

Candy starts strong. ... Once it catches back up with the murder, however, “Candy” starts to show its seams. Having moved past the perhaps easier to adapt stories of how Betty and Candy lived their daily lives, the series’ march toward its unsatisfying end quickly causes it to lose grip on its own narrative and strengths. ... This one ultimately stumbles right when it really counts.

This pairing [Jessica Biel and Melanie Lynskey] of strongly gendered performances would be fine if Candy used them to critique the virgin/harlot dichotomy. But as it stands, this series is a textbook example of how not to write women, reinforcing stereotypes instead of challenging them.

Part of the problem is that Candy is trying to be all the things simultaneously: a gritty true-crime series, a tense courtroom drama and a rich character study. But without committing to any of these ideas, it ends up going nowhere.

If you really like true-crime dramas, you’ll probably like this one. But if you like true stories – ones that create layered versions of real people and use them to illustrate something universal about the human experience – Candy won’t hit the sweet spot.

These characters are outlines with little filler, and the connective tissue between them and the surrounding community is missing. A broader observation about the reverberations and ramifications of this violence doesn’t materialize, and in its absence it creates a kind of anticlimax. ... What Candy lacks is a sense of why this story and why now.